


Just a Small Problem

by iglowindark



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, blackhill - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-10-25 12:10:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17724938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iglowindark/pseuds/iglowindark
Summary: An accident in Tony's lab uncovers an unpleasant truth about Maria's past, and Natasha realizes that what she thought was something brief and casual is actually much, much more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Babysitting Maria](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5489966) by [wizardofahz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizardofahz/pseuds/wizardofahz). 



> Blackhill will always be my favorite Marvel ship. Canon? What canon? I read a brilliant story by wizardofahz about Maria being accidentally de-aged, and then this story happened in my head. It theoretically takes place after CA:TWS, when Maria is working for SI, and the Avengers are somewhat scattered.
> 
> My first post to AO3; I have the unfortunate habit of lurking, but there are so many excellent authors out there writing amazing things. I'm trying to kick-start a better commenting habit with posting something of my own. This work is un-beta-ed, all mistakes are my own. Critical feedback welcome!
> 
> And clearly, I don't own any of the MCU properties or characters.

Tony, left to his own devices, did a lot of dumb stuff. In the early years, Pepper had measured by quantity: how many dumb things did Tony do, on average, in a week? That got complicated quickly, because often one dumb decision would directly influence another and Pepper couldn’t always find a convenient division point.

For a while, she ranked them on a scale: how dumb, exactly, had Tony been when he tried to create SCUBA gear that had to be surgically implanted in your chest? But the scale had just kept getting bigger, and by the time Pepper was assigning values like “293 out of 10”, she had realized that her scale was a little bit like outer space: the distances were just too great for humans to comprehend.

Recently, she had begun thinking of Tony’s dumb stuff in terms of “fixability”. Tony could do something phenomenally stupid, but if it could be 100% reversed or resolved within 24 hours, was it _really_ that dumb? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it....

Having Bruce around had a two-fold effect. There were more dumb things happening, but now Pepper didn’t always hear about them until Bruce and Tony (mainly Bruce) had already fixed them. It had lulled her into a false sense of security.

She was in the elevator, on her way down to one of the labs, from which she had received a frantic call from Tony a moment ago.

She was legitimately worried. Tony had sounded rattled, and for a man with a propensity to do dumb stuff that eclipsed both quantification and qualification, being rattled meant that something had gone very wrong. For Tony to sound rattled even though he was down there with Bruce - arguably one of the few people on the planet smarter than Tony - meant that something was very, _very_ wrong.

The elevator pinged and the doors slid open. Pepper instinctively turned to shield herself from whatever monstrosity might be lurking in the lab, despite the fact that Tony wouldn’t have called her down if it would have put her in danger. After a moment, she peeked out. The lab was quiet. There were no creatures or aliens, no poisonous gases or fireballs, no signs of explosions, or freak indoor-weather events, no unidentifiable substances on the walls, floors or ceilings. It was just quiet.

Pepper stepped out of the elevator and looked around. Tony and Bruce must be working in one of the specialized ante-rooms. “JARVIS? Where is Tony?”

“Master Stark is in the Laser Enclosure with Doctor Banner and Commander Hill.”

Oh great, whatever dumb thing Tony had done now had been severe enough to require Maria’s intervention? Pepper made her way towards a room in the back that was reserved for work that required any type of focused energy beam. She felt relatively safe approaching the reinforced door. The walls of the Laser Enclosure had only been breached from within once. Twice if you counted the Hulk.

She pounded her fist twice against the heavy door. It immediately cracked open, Tony’s face looking out at her, wide-eyed.

“Tony? What’s going on?”

“We, um. We have a problem.” Tony didn’t open the door any further.

“Yes, you said that when you called me down here. Are you okay? Is Bruce okay?”

“Uh, yeah, we’re fine.” Tony rubbed uncomfortably at his forehead.

“What happened? JARVIS said Maria was down here, did you call her? Did something happen to Steve? Or Natasha? Is Maria okay?” Pepper’s worry was increasing. Tony was standing in the door, looking pale and rather ill.

“Tony, answer me!” Pepper pushed at the door, but Tony held it.

“Uh, technically, everyone is fine.”

“ _Technically?!_ ” Pepper gave the door a hard shove and Tony finally relented, stepping back and letting Pepper enter.

Bruce was standing at the far side of the room, hands on his head, staring down at a small bundle on the floor. Pepper walked up beside him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder, speaking softly, “Bruce?”

He didn’t respond, just kept staring. Pepper followed his gaze. The bundle on the floor was… clothing. And buried in the clothes, curled in a ball, eyes closed, was a tiny child.

Pepper stared. And stared. And then turned, slowly, to look at Tony.

“Tony.”

Tony scratched his head and let his eyes wander around the room, looking anywhere but at Pepper.

“Did you know there was a small child in your lab?” Pepper’s voice was calm and without inflection. Tony didn’t respond.

“Would you like to tell me _why_ there is a small child in your lab?”

“It’s Maria.” Bruce spoke up hoarsely from her side. Pepper whipped around to glare at the other man.

“I _gathered_ as much. I’ll even go out on a limb and guess that Maria didn’t _ask_ to be turned into a small child, so what happened and WHY IS THERE A SMALL CHILD IN YOUR LAB?!”

“Pepper-”

“We just called her down to ask her-”

“Seriously, Tony! What were you DOING!!?”

“Hey, come on, this isn’t the worst-”

“It was an accident, Pepper.”

“I certainly _hope_ it was an accident!”

“Hey, Commander Pill over there could have just stayed outside-”

“We called her in here, Tony-”

“WHY!?!?”

“We thought-”

“No, I don’t care why, _what were you trying to do_?”

“Time portals.”

“ _Excuse me!?_ ”

“We were trying to get one of Dr. Foster’s dimensional portals to work as a time portal.”

“Oh…. God….”

“Pepper, I swear, we didn’t mean to-”

“We thought it was off. We needed Maria to tell us what the New Mexico site looked like, and….”

“We thought it was off.”

“You. Thought. WHAT. Was. Off?”

“The particle beam. It powers the portal. We thought it was off.”

“It wasn’t.”

“What- I can’t- this… Tony…”

“I know, it’s not great.”

“Is she…”

“She’s alive. Just unconscious.”

“Is she _okay_?”

“We think so. JARVIS scanned her. Said she’s perfectly healthy, if a little on the small side, for a five-year-old.”

“She’s five.”

“Roughly. JARVIS said.”

“You turned my Director of Security Operations into a five year old.”

“Hey, she’s my Director of Security Operations too.”

“Tony!”

“Ok, right, I know-”

“Reverse it! NOW!”

“I uh…”

“We don’t know how.”

“EXCUSE ME?”

“Yet! We don’t know how, _yet_.”

“That is NOT COMFORTING!”

“Hey, stop yelling, I called you down here to help me, not yell-”

“Help _you_?? How about help for the FIVE YEAR OLD unconscious on your floor!?!”

“Pepper, it really was an accident.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that Maria is FIVE YEARS OLD. I don’t even know- what are we going to _do_?”

“We need to call Jane. She knows how these portals work, she can probably figure out-”

“We need to call Natasha!”

“Oh no. No, no, no, no, no, there’s no need to bring the Black Widow into this. Just leave her alone. Who knows where she is, or what she’s doing? We wouldn’t want to disturb her if she’s on a mission. Or on vacation. Or anywhere, doing anything. Right?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are so kind - your reviews make me smile. They're like meth without the unpleasant side effects of, you know, drugs. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing!
> 
> My goal is to update every other day or so. I have the bulk of the story written already, but I've already found myself making some slight changes as I read through for the "last time". This chapter is shorter than I intended for that reason, but I figured a short chapter is better than a longer wait? *hopes*
> 
> All mistakes are mine, and I still have no ownership whatsoever over even the tiniest corner of the MCU.

“I’m going to kill them. Twice.”

Pepper had only given her the bare details over the phone: an experiment gone wrong had compromised Maria, and Natasha was needed back at the Tower. Natasha, across town scouting out some potential new recruits, had made record time and was demanding answers of Pepper as soon as she was within shouting distance in the lobby. Pepper had shushed and hustled her into the elevator, explaining as best she could the events of the afternoon; now she ignored the scorching glare and focused on what information she could provide to Natasha that might help the situation.

“Tony and Bruce have confirmed it’s not true time travel. This isn’t Past Maria come forward into our time.”

Natasha was pacing, as much as one could pace inside an elevator. “How do they- never mind. So Maria is Present Maria…. Only smaller?”

Pepper shook her head, partially in response to Natasha’s question, partially at the absurdity of the situation. “Well, not really. She’s an actual child, not just a smaller version of herself. She doesn’t appear to have any knowledge of the present - she doesn’t recognize any of us. She’s her Five Year Old Self, just… here now.”

“This is insane.” Natasha muttered, pressing her fingers to her temples. “What do we do?”

“Tony and Bruce are working on it. Actually, a lot of people are working on it now. Doctor Foster has already been sending over prototypes for-"

“No, I mean what do  _ we _ do? While those two morons work on reversing the… de-aging… what do we do? What does Maria do? If she doesn’t remember any of us, does she have any idea where she is? Or  _ when _ she is?”

Pepper shook her head again, “I was hoping you would know what to do. She was unconscious for quite some time and when she woke up, she was rather distressed.”

“Distressed how?” There was a tinge of panic in Natasha’s voice.

“Well, she woke up on the floor of a lab, surrounded by three strange adults who were arguing about what to do with her. She tried to run away. She only got as far as the main lab; she’s hiding at the back of one of the supply cabinets. We didn’t want to traumatize her more by dragging her out. We’ve all tried talking to her; she understands us, sometimes she’ll respond to us non-verbally, but she hasn’t spoken and she definitely doesn’t trust us.”

Natasha snorted rudely.  The elevator doors opened and Pepper stepped out, but Natasha didn’t. Pepper turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow in question.

“What the hell am I even doing here, Pepper?” Natasha hissed, keeping her voice low. She could see Tony on the other side of the lab, crouched in front of an open cabinet door.  “If she doesn’t know any of you, she’s not going to know me!”

“True, but… you know her? You and Adult Maria get along, I’m sure you and Child Maria can…”

“Can what? Find common ground?” Natasha’s voice was creeping towards hysterical. “Pepper, I don’t know anything about Maria’s childhood and I don’t remember anything about mine. This is a bad idea. I’m not a kid person, I can’t be around a child. What if I say something, or do something - Pepper I could rewrite history on accident!”

Pepper heaved a sigh and held up three fingers, “First of all, I told you, this isn’t actual time travel, so there’s no ‘step on a bug, dinosaurs in downtown Manhattan’ sort of thing going on here. We don’t even know for sure that Maria will remember any of this once Tony and Bruce reverse the de-aging. Second, you’re around Clint’s kids all the time and they were alive and well last I heard; I’ve seen their drawings on your fridge so don’t try to tell me you don’t adore them. And third, you and Maria have been dating for months now, how do you not know anything about her childhood?”

“Eleven weeks,” Natasha mumbled dejectedly, “We don’t… she doesn’t talk about it. And it’s not like I can share my childhood memories in return so… we just… don’t talk about it.”

Pepper watched the Black Widow standing in the elevator, looking perfectly human: nervous, uncertain, lost. “Okay, well. Natasha, you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. But I really think you’re the one with the best shot of making Maria feel comfortable. Bruce tried talking to her, I tried talking to her… Tony is still trying.” Pepper waved a hand blindly at Tony, who was trying to shape his hair into devil horns. “She won’t speak and she won’t come out of the cupboard. We can’t just leave her there. You’re not going to hurt her. I trust you and I know Maria trusts you.”

Natasha considered Pepper’s words for a long minute, biting at her bottom lip. “Okay… okay. Just… tell Tony that if this wrecks our re- if I break Maria, I’m going to dig out every Widow’s Bite I can find and glue them to some  _ very _ unpleasant places.”

Pepper bit back a grin, “Well, that’s a step up from murdering, I suppose.”

“Oh, I’m still going to murder him for this. But if it all works out in the end, I’ll make it quick and painless instead of slow and electric.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a longer chapter and finally some Natasha and Maria interaction. I should probably mention that I skew more towards the Marvel Cinematic Universe than the comics - but even given that, there's a lot of poetic license taken here - ages, backgrounds, what kind of parts might be in a time machine. I draw more from good fanfic than from canon. I also clearly enjoy the use of ellipses to an unhealthy amount. I'm not sorry...
> 
> My humble thanks again to everyone taking the time to read and review! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (And I still don't own the people, the places, or the technology.)

Tony saw Natasha approaching from the corner of his eye and scrambled away before she was within arm’s reach. She shot him a glare that could have melted faces as he stumbled back, pointing to the Laser Enclosure, “I’ll go help Bruce. He’s probably already got a solution, so I’ll just, yeah.”

Natasha let him retreat without a word. She stopped in front of the supply cupboard and took a steadying breath. What would SHIELD procedure for this sort of thing be? Natasha lowered herself into a crouch, looking into the dim recesses of the cupboard.

At the very back, pressed tightly into the corner, was Maria. Natasha stared at the girl. Her hair was lighter than Adult Maria’s, and fell in reckless and tangled waves around a pale face with freckles on the cheeks. She was wrapped in what Natasha recognized as one of Maria’s starched button-down shirts, this one a pale blue. The sleeves were bunched around her arms and the bottom of the shirt had been pulled over her knees, which she was hugging to her chest. She looked small. Pepper had said five, but Natasha didn’t remember if Lila Barton had been this tiny at that age. It was hard to tell how short she was, curled up in the cupboard, but her wrists and ankles looked impossibly small and bony, and her face was already betraying the sharp angles she displayed in adulthood, with none of the traces of baby fat that Cooper Barton had carried well past seven. Any lingering doubt over who this child was couldn’t last; her eyes were pure Maria Hill. Two piercing blue eyes, huge in the tiny face, glancing around with the same sharp observation that Adult Maria Hill employed, missing nothing, betraying even less.

Natasha blinked. Maria blinked. The girl didn’t look all that scared, although the fact that she was hiding in a cupboard might be giving away the emotions hidden from her face.

Natasha cleared her throat. “Hi Maria. I’m Natasha.”

Another blink.

“Do you… do you remember me?”

A pause, then a slow shake of the head.

“Okay, that’s okay. Um… do you want to come out?”

 

It had taken twenty-eight minutes (not that Natasha was counting) and the lure of water to coax Maria out of the supply cabinet. JARVIS had supplied a water bottle as well as a set of clothes that actually fit the small girl. Natasha wondered briefly how an AI managed to produce children’s clothing on demand, but dismissed it as a question better suited for a day when her girlfriend hadn’t been de-aged by thirty-plus years.

Natasha was having trouble reconciling her girlfriend with this girl. Commander Maria Hill (former, although Natasha didn’t acknowledge that) was all confidence, swagger, sharp tongue and sharp angles. She stood tall and although she was thin, Natasha knew for a fact that she was nothing but muscle. She moved with authority and, when called upon to fight, with lethal efficiency. She didn’t fight for style points, she went for the quickest and most direct route to victory. She spoke with authority and efficiency as well: her voice was clear and concise, and she had a way of projecting it that allowed it to carry across a room without being raised. Which just meant that when she did choose to raise her voice, to shout out an order or to sharply reprimand a wayward baby Agent, it felt like that voice was piercing through your chest and ripping out the other side.

Realistically, Natasha knew that small children didn’t strut around commanding Helicarriers and lecturing Congress, but she thought there would have been more markers in Little Maria pointing to her eventual personality and character.

Little Maria didn’t behave much like Lila Barton either. While Lila was all shrieks and giggles and boundless energy and the need to touch  _ everything _ , Little Maria was nearly mute, silent even in her movements, soberly observant of the things and people around her, and prone to clenching her little fists at her side, as if maybe she  _ wanted _ to touch everything and was holding herself back.

When she had crawled out of the supply cupboard, tangled in the larger shirt and stumbling, Natasha had offered to help her dress in the new clothes. Maria had declined with a shy but firm insistence, “I can do it.”

She had disappeared into the small bathroom attached to the lab, and emerged almost fifteen minutes later, glancing up worriedly at first Natasha, then at Pepper.

“Everything okay, Maria?” Pepper asked kindly.

Maria nodded silently and Natasha noted that her little fists curled up again, this time bunching the fabric of her shirt in them.

Pepper held up a small pair of sneakers, “We’ve got shoes for you, too. Probably not the best idea to be wandering around the lab in just your socks!”

Maria nodded and walked away, and for a moment Natasha thought the little thing was displaying some hidden rebellious streak, but when Maria reached the nearest workbench, she hauled herself up and looked expectantly at Pepper and the shoes.

Pepper grinned openly at the sight and shoved the shoes into Natasha’s hands. “Go put shoes on your girlfriend,” she murmured.

“That’s not funny,” Natasha growled under her breath, but she carefully calmed her expression and knelt down in front of Maria. She looked at the stiff little sneakers, so new the laces hadn’t even been threaded and sighed, “Why couldn’t we get velcro ones?”

Maria watched Natasha wrestle the laces through the miniscule eyelets and carefully slip each shoe onto a foot. When Natasha grabbed the ends of the laces to tie the first shoe, Maria piped up, “I can do that.” Almost as soon as she spoke, she shrunk back a little, regret in her eyes.

“Oh yeah?” Natasha challenged lightly, “Let’s see it.” She dropped the laces with a flourish and leaned back.

The barest hint of a smile touched the corner of Maria’s mouth and she planted her right foot on the bench, reaching around her knee to grab the laces. With steady and focused movements, she correctly, if a bit loosely, tied her shoe, and then followed it up with the left one.

“Okay, well, I’m impressed.” Natasha held out her hand for a high-five. Maria studied it for several seconds before she reached up and carefully touched her tiny hand to Natasha’s.

“Oh, no, no way. That wasn’t a high-five.” Natasha shook her head dramatically. This was familiar ground. Lila Barton had been a hesitant high-fiver too, until Natasha had gotten to her. Now the kid was a lock for the High-Five Olympics, if anyone ever got around to having those.

Maria didn’t seem to know how to take Natasha’s comment. Her expression had gone back to neutral, big blue owl eyes blinking.

“High-fives have gotta be awesome. They’re like the super version of hand-shakes, so when you high-five, you have to mean it. Here, watch this; Pepper, come help me out with something.”

Pepper walked over to the workbench. Natasha stood up and looked at Maria, “You ready? ‘Cause Pepper and I are gonna do a super amazing high-five, and then you and I are gonna do one. Okay?”

Maria nodded with as much animation as Natasha had seen from her all afternoon. She stared at the two women in anticipation.

“Pepper, on the count of three, we’re gonna jump and high-five.”

Pepper gave Natasha an exaggerated nod, “Got it!”

“One… two… three!”

Natasha and Pepper each hopped a foot or so off the ground, and high-fived. Their hands slapped together with a sharp ‘ _ crack _ ’. Pepper had to bite her lip to stifle a shout of pain. Natasha had swung  _ hard _ .

Natasha gave Pepper an evil little smile, “Paaayyyybaaack,” she breathed out, barely audible, before turning to Maria.

“Whatcha think? Awesome, right?”

Maria was actually smiling, a tiny little grin that didn’t show teeth but still lit up her face. Natasha grinned back. “Your turn. Hop down.”

Maria scooted herself off the bench, and stood facing Natasha. Natasha crouched down and held her hand up around her shoulder. “When I count to three, you jump up, and give me the awesome-est high-five you’ve got. Okay?”

Maria nodded firmly. Her eyes were locked on Natasha’s hand. Now there was an Adult Maria trait: laser-focused on her goal.

“One... two… three!”

Maria sprang forward and slapped her hand against Natasha’s. Natasha kept her arm firm enough to meet Maria’s hand solidly and create a loud  _ slap _ .

“Yes!” Natasha fist pumped and Maria grinned at her again. This time, Natasha swore she could see teeth.

“Hey! Is this a new SHIELD training program going on out here?” Tony’s voice boomed from the doorway to the Laser Enclosure.

Maria startled, whirling around so fast she lost her balance and stumbled back, dropping onto her butt on the floor but scrambling to her feet immediately.

“How ‘bout keeping your voice down you jacka--ahl?” Natasha stumbled over the aborted curse word but still managed to give Stark her best death stare.

Tony had the decency to look abashed, not having intended to startle the little girl. “Right. Sorry. Um, how’s it going out here?”

“How’s it going  _ in there _ ?” Pepper asked pointedly.

Natasha didn’t miss that Maria had slid carefully to her right, placing herself directly behind the assassin and out of sight of Stark.

Tony scrubbed at his face, “It’s going a lot of nowhere. Bruce has Jane on video conference right now, they’re looking at the phase inverter….” He trailed off and craned his head to peer around Natasha. “How’s the pipsqueak?”

“She’s fine.” Natasha reported breezily, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning her body to cut off his line of sight.

“Okay. Well… I guess I’ll…. Get back to it.”

“Yes, that’s probably advisable.”

Tony gave a weak little wave and retreated to the Laser Enclosure.

Natasha turned to look at Maria. She was visibly shaking, her little fists clenched against her legs. “Oh, hey, Maria...” Natasha moved towards her, but Maria took a very deliberate step back and Natasha froze.

She read body language for a living and this little kid - this  _ Maria _ \- was screaming stress and fear and discomfort, all without saying a word. Natasha took a deep, steadying breath. It was obvious that her experiences with Cooper and Lila Barton hadn’t prepared her for this. Were the Barton kids just naturally gregarious? Were most kids like them, or more like this little version of Maria, skittish and wary? And if Maria had truly de-aged, carrying none of her adult experiences and memories with her, what was she so afraid of? She was a five-year old for heaven’s sake, she shouldn’t have a care in the world. She hadn’t yet fought aliens, or her friends controlled by aliens. She hadn’t seen death, hadn’t killed. She hadn’t lied, or been lied to, her heart hadn’t been broken, nor had her bones. She hadn’t watched the world or her workplace turn into a nasty, deceitful, ruthless jungle. She hadn’t been betrayed by people she trusted, people she cared for. Had she?

Adult Maria really hadn’t spoken about her childhood much to Natasha. She had mentioned her mother dying in childbirth, and being raised by a single father. She had talked about feeling out of place in high school and signing up for the Marines as soon as she was old enough. She spoke of leaving town on a bus, but after that… all of her stories were of her time in the Marines or her early years in SHIELD, and infrequently, if Natasha got her drunk, of the few months spent in Madripoor, learning a life’s worth of lessons on the fly.

Natasha was getting the sinking feeling that Maria kept her childhood buried on purpose.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled a bit with this chapter - I rewrote about half of it. I'm trying to toe the line between humor (because really, this premise is ridiculous on so many fronts) and angst/feels (because it's Blackhill and that is angst/feels to me). I'd love to know what y'all think!
> 
> The mistakes are mine, Marvel is not, enjoy!

The High-Five Breakthrough had been completely undone by Tony’s unfortunate timing. Maria had reverted to cupboard behavior in every sense other than actually crawling back into the cupboard.

Natasha and Pepper decided to get her out of the lab, hoping that being in the comfort and relative normalcy of the Avengers common quarters would help relax her. Little Maria eyed the elevator with suspicion, but allowed herself to be herded inside. It wasn’t lost on Natasha that Little Maria was deftly dodging her every time she reached out a hand to guide her.

When the elevator doors opened on the Avengers common room - where there had suddenly appeared a pile of crayons and markers and pens and colored pencils and paper of every shape and size - Maria crept out, but stayed rooted to the floor next to the wall.

Natasha and Pepper moved to the middle of the room and settled themselves on the floor at the low standing coffee table full of art supplies.

“Maria? Do you want to come draw?”

Maria inched forward at Natasha’s question, but stayed on the raised floor by the elevator. Natasha looked to Pepper. “What do I  _ do _ ?” she whispered.

Pepper gave her a sympathetic shrug and Natasha huffed in frustration. This was not going as she had planned. Not like she actually had a plan.

“Well, is it okay if Pepper and I draw?” Natasha kept her question light, but made sure to hold eye contact with Little Maria to make sure she knew it was a real question. They’d both been in enough rooms full of men asking rhetorical questions and then speaking right over them. Maria might not have those memories right now, but Natasha did.

When Little Maria realized that Natasha was waiting for an answer, she nodded firmly.

“Okay, cool. Thanks. I’ll save you a spot right here if you decide you want to draw. But don’t wait too long, Pepper and I might use up all the paper.” Natasha decided to go the direct route. Adult Maria didn’t like ambiguities or indecisiveness, something it had taken Natasha two weeks of embarrassing flirting to figure out was a personal trait, not just a workplace preference.

Natasha and Pepper colored intently for a few minutes before Pepper looked up with a sharp “oh!” of an idea. “JARVIS, Maria and Natasha and I would like to hear a story. Do you know any good ones?” Pepper smiled at her own brilliance and then gasped again and hastily added, “Stories that are age appropriate for a five year old. None of Tony’s stories, please.”

“Of course, Miss Potts.” the AI responded, and launched into a story about ducklings.

It worked. Little Maria was enthralled by the disembodied voice, and starting scanning the room for the source. Whether it was the voice or the story, Natasha wasn’t sure, but she watched out of the corner of her eye as Maria relaxed the set of her shoulders and started wandering around the common area in search of JARVIS.

After the first story, at Pepper’s prompting, JARVIS began a new tale, this one about a princess with a mattress problem. Maria had made her way into the sunken middle of the room, and Natasha made a point to smile at her every time she glanced over.

After the fourth story, JARVIS asked Maria directly if she liked it. Looking around the room, at the walls, ceiling, floor, Maria nodded shyly. JARVIS didn’t answer. Although Natasha knew JARVIS had sensors and cameras all over the place, and could certainly see and interpret Maria nodding, the AI remained silent and a few moments later Maria spoke, “Yes, thank you... Mr. JARVIS.”

“Miss Hill, may I call you Miss Hill?”

“Yes, Mr. JARVIS.”

“Miss Hill, do you like to draw?”

Maria shrugged, and then looked at Natasha expectantly.

Natasha froze. What was this? Was she supposed to say something? Was Maria asking her if she liked to draw? What was she supposed to say? Maris never needed Natasha to speak for her. She never needed anybody to speak for her. Wouldn’t that be insulting? Natasha shot an alarmed look at Pepper, who just shook her head in pity at the super-spy being completely undone by a five year old.

“You really are hopeless.” Pepper muttered.

Natasha narrowed her eyes at that. Fine, back to direct it was.

“Maria, why don’t you come draw with me? I could use some help. I don’t know what color to make this elephant.”

“ _ That’s _ an elephant?” Pepper whispered. Natasha kicked her foot out under the coffee table, catching Pepper in the shin.

“Ou-wow, that is a nice elephant.”

Natasha smiled and crooked her finger at Maria, pointing to a clean white sheet of paper next to her.

Maria seemed satisfied with this, and to Natasha’s surprise, scampered directly to her side and settled down in front of the paper. Natasha shoved a pile of crayons and colored pencils closer to the small girl, and after a moment of concentration, Maria picked up a pale blue crayon and held it out to Natasha.

“For the elephant.” she spoke softly.

Natasha resisted the urge to wrap the small thing up in a hug, instead reaching out to take the crayon.

“Thank you.”

The three girls settled into drawing. Pepper and Natasha kept up an easy and steady conversation, both with each other and with JARVIS. Little Maria stopped hesitating after every question aimed at her, and Natasha started feeling a familiar giddy feeling in her chest as she tried to come up with jokes or comments that would draw a smile across that tiny face. Natasha surreptitiously moved as many crayons out of Maria’s reach as she could, and was rewarded with Maria’s gentle requests to hand her missing colors. She pushed her luck further and handed Maria tangerine orange after she asked for dark green. Little Maria looked up at Natasha with a familiar arched eyebrow and said “That’s not green!”

Natasha swallowed a teasing retort and offered up instead, “Oh, right! Dark green.” She quickly switched out tangerine for the correct color and offered it to Maria, who replied with the standard “thank you” and went back to coloring in grass growing out of the top of what looked to Natasha like an uncanny representation of the Triskelion.

Feeling eyes on her, Natasha looked up. Pepper had stopped coloring and was resting her chin in her hand, smiling in amusement.

“I am  _ not _ hopeless!” Natasha muttered.

Pepper just chucked.

Oblivious, Little Maria sighed heavily, switched her crayon to her left hand, and leaned her right side heavily into Natasha.

Natasha froze. Well, never mind. Pepper was right. She was hopeless


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus chapter! This starts out on the lighter side, but fair warning, there is heart-squeezing stuff here and in the near future.
> 
> I'm messing with the MCU timeline and making Barton's family a known thing to the larger group (which I actually already did in an earlier chapter, but forgot to mention). Also, I do not acknowledge that Bruce/Natasha is, was, or ever will be a thing. Also also, I seem to have a soft spot for Tony. *shrugs*
> 
> Happy reading! (still don't own any of them)

Little Maria was sitting on a tall chair pulled up to the breakfast counter in the Avenger’s kitchen, her feet dangling a foot above the highest rung. Pepper had transferred some of the art materials to the counter and Maria was contentedly drawing, kicking her legs back and forth, occasionally looking up to observe the action in the kitchen.

An extended conversation - aided heavily by JARVIS - had convinced Maria that Tony and Bruce were not altogether scary, and that they weren’t going to bother her if they came up to eat dinner with them. The first fifteen minutes or so had been a tense affair, not helped by the fact that Tony and Bruce seemed to be as afraid of Little Maria as she was of them. Natasha had stayed close, letting Maria hide behind her when she chose, and feeling oddly proud. Adult Maria would most likely punch Natasha before she’d hide behind her.

Natasha, Pepper, Tony and Bruce were attempting to make dinner - together. Each of them knew how to cook, theoretically, and Natasha and Bruce in particular had fended for themselves long enough to have established actual meals they could make without referring to a recipe; but as a unit, attempting to cook from scratch a healthy meal for a five year old, and somehow wanting to impress this same five year old, they were struggling. Not that they’d ever admit it. They’d finally given up on a normal dinner, and started serving up whatever was deemed edible.

Bruce insisted that vegetables had to feature prominently and had gone through peas, broccoli, sauteed onions, asparagus, overcooked spinach and canned beets before hitting on raw carrots. He had also been banned from coming within 10 feet of Natasha with asparagus ever again, on pain of his life.

Natasha was sporting a fine sheen of flour from her fingers to her elbows. She had started out trying to make blini. Two smoke alarms, one burned hand and one proper blini later, she’d changed her mind and moved on to pierogies. To be fair, Maria had enjoyed the singular success; she had wolfed it down after Natasha has smeared it with yogurt and strawberry preserves. And while the pierogies were not setting off the smoke alarm, they were proving more difficult than Natasha remembered. She finally plated up a steaming heap of deconstructed beef and cabbage pierogi that everyone agreed was better than any of Bruce’s attempts at vegetables.

Pepper had tried valiantly to guide the dinner menu, but when Tony decided to make paella, and then decided that he didn’t have the patience for deveining shrimp and moved on to oysters on the half-shell, Pepper’s focus had shifted to guiding Tony. Especially after he nearly cut his thumb off trying to open the first oyster. Pepper had taken to raiding the fridge and pantry for snacks in between helping (deliberately hindering) Tony. She’d select an item, smell it - just in case, this was after all one of Tony’s kitchens - and then offer it up to the group, caring most whether Maria liked it. Pickles were a big hit. Creamed corn, not so much. Olives, breakfast sausage and string cheese all got happy smiles. Leftover fried calamari got dumped unceremoniously, and feta cheese earned a horribly disgusted and apologetic face as Little Maria tried to spit it out without looking like she was spitting it out.

Tony was on his third batch of fried rice, after giving up on seafood entirely. The first two batches had reawakened the smoke alarm, but this last one seemed promising. Pepper even gave him a genuine thumbs up after dipping a spoon in for a taste. Tony dumped the rice into a large serving bowl and thumped it down on the counter. Natasha handed him a smaller bowl and he dished a heaping spoonful into it, setting it next to Maria.

“Here you go, pipsqueak. Try that and then tell everyone how good it is, and how terrible their stuff was by comparison.”

Maria dropped her colored pencil and picked up her spoon. She scooped up a spoonful of the rice, blowing on it carefully before gamely shoving it in her mouth. Tony watched her intently. After a few chews, she looked up at him, staring at him with a blank face.

“Well? Do you like it?”

Natasha almost lost it, watching tiny little Maria holding Tony in animated suspension, making him sweat over something as inane as rice.

Just as Tony was about to pop a vein, Maria nodded, a grin splitting her face, rice in her teeth.

Pepper and Bruce burst out laughing. Tony shook his head fondly at Maria. “Alright, alright. Eat your dinner.”

Maria swallowed her mouthful and reached out for her water cup. She had to reach over the bowl of rice, and it was just far enough to throw her a bit off target. Her fingers brushed the cup and tipped it over, sending water cascading across the counter.

“Hey!” Tony immediately reached for the half-finished drawing that Maria had been working on, intending to pull it out of the way of the water. At his sudden movement, Maria audibly yelped, jerking back in her chair, squeezing her eyes shut and pulling her arms up to cover her face. Everyone froze.

The kitchen hung in strained stillness, Tony’s arm frozen mid-air in front of Maria. In the silence, they could hear Maria’s rapid, gasping breath. Tony shot a pained look at Pepper. Natasha had jumped to her feet when Maria had cried out, but Pepper put a careful hand on her arm, silently asking her to give Tony a chance.

Finally, Tony moved his arm, reaching behind Maria to gently place his palm on her back. She flinched, and pressed her fists hard against her face.

“Hey, pipsqueak.” Tony spoke softly as his hand began to rub gentle circles on Maria’s back. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s okay. You’re not in trouble. Just water. Water won’t hurt anything.”

Tony kept up the soft circles and the soothing tone, “You can ask JARVIS if you want. I’ve gotten water on JARVIS a bunch of times. He doesn’t mind. Even if it wasn’t water, it was just an accident. I’m not mad. Nobody is mad.”

As he spoke, Maria’s breathing calmed, and she slowly lowered her arms, although she didn’t look up from her lap.

Natasha pulled away from Pepper and moved to the other side of Maria’s chair, crouching down so she could look up into the little face. “Hi,” she whispered. Little Maria looked exhausted. It occurred to Natasha that it was almost 9 pm, and Adult Maria had been up early for a sparring session with her, and then had spent the morning wrangling a new batch of baby agents masquerading as Stark Industries interns, and then had gotten de-aged, and who knew how tiring that might be. And then she’d spent the entire afternoon and evening as a lost, uncertain five year old.

“Are you still hungry?”

Maria shook her head wordlessly.

“Well, I’m pretty tired after all that drawing and cooking. I think I’m about ready for bed. What about you?”

Maria nodded, immediately moving to climb down from the chair, ignoring the hand that Natasha held out to help.

Tony flashed an apologetic look at Natasha, but she waved him off. Pepper got up from her seat as well. “There’s a guest bedroom on this floor that should be all made up. JARVIS?”

“Yes, Miss Potts, the guest room is all ready for Miss Hill. I took the liberty of providing several different options of jammies.”

Tony shot a confounded look at the ceiling. When had JARVIS learned the word “jammies”?

“Thank you, JARVIS.” Pepper smiled.

 

Natasha returned to the kitchen after putting Little Maria to bed. Thank God the kid was so self-sufficient. Natasha had been enlisted for bedtime stories at the Barton house, but she’d had no idea how much work went into putting miniature humans to bed. Jammies and brushing teeth and washing hands and washing face and two attempts at brushing hair and at least three different trips to the bathroom and water cups and night-lights and “NO SOCKS!” JARVIS had helped immensely, although Natasha had no plans of telling the others that the AI had taken over the bedtime checklist after Natasha’s suggestion of hair-braiding earned a grouchy frown from Maria. Natasha would swear on her life that JARVIS liked Little Maria. She knew perfectly well that it was impossible for an AI to have emotions or respond to anything it had not been programmed to recognize and act on, but still.

Maria had fallen asleep almost before Natasha could pull the blanket over her.

Pepper and Tony and Bruce were at the breakfast counter, wine glasses in hand. The kitchen looked like someone had made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning up. Natasha pulled up a stool, and Pepper pushed an empty wine glass and a bottle of wine towards her.

“I’m sorry I scared her, Nat. I didn’t mean to.” Tony spoke before Natasha had finished pouring herself a glass.

“I know.” She tipped her glass gently in his direction.

“Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that she’s as skittish as she is. After all, she woke up in a strange place, surrounded by strange people, and nobody has tried to explain to her what’s going on.”

Bruce gave Pepper an odd look, “You think we should try to explain to a five year old how a time portal reversed the aging process in a targeted-”

“No, no, no,” Pepper interrupted, shaking her head, “I’m just saying, no one has asked her where she lives, or if she wants to go home.”

“She is home.” Tony pointed out blankly, waving vaguely around him.

“But she doesn’t know that.” Pepper argued. “If a five year old woke up in the middle of a department store downtown, eventually someone would ask about her parents, or her family, and her name and her address and who might be worried about her. They’d be promising to find her family, and telling her she’d be home soon. When Maria woke up, we called her by her name, we never asked if she knew someone that we should try to find, or if she knew a place she wanted to go. We just told her our names and then acted surprised when she didn’t immediately trust us!”

“Are we sure she’s five?” Bruce wondered out loud. “She seems really small for a five year old.”

“Oh, you hang out in a lot of elementary schools, Professor? Have the average height of kids worked out?” Tony asked.

“Five year olds don’t go to school!”

“Wait, she wouldn’t have been in school by this point?” Natasha interrupted, looking confused.

Pepper shrugged, “Maybe preschool or Kindergarten.”

Natasha grew more confused, “When do American kids learn to read and write? She was doing both earlier.”

Tony scoffed, “Hey, I was doing quadratic equations at her age-”

“You were not!” Bruce exclaimed, laughing.

“Well, maybe not at five, but-”

“Some kids know how to read and write before they start school. Depends on the kid, I guess.” Pepper shrugged.

“But if she can read and write, she would know her address, right?” Natasha pressed.

“We never asked her. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she doesn’t exactly volunteer her innermost thoughts and dreams. Plus, we don’t need her address. We’re not taking her anywhere.” Tony again waved vaguely.

“Tony’s right, she doesn’t say much unless you ask her a direct question.” Bruce offered.

“Because she’s scared and we’re strangers!” Pepper said, exasperated.

“No we’re not…” Natasha muttered petulantly, poking at her glass of wine and making it slosh up the sides.

“Well I’m sorry we couldn’t de-age her with her memories intact-”

Natasha interrupted with a sharp motion of her hand, “Oh yes, which brings me back to a question I’ve had for a while now, which is why were you trying to de-age her  _ in the first place?! _ ”

“We weren’t! It was an accident!” Tony was on his feet, staring across the counter at Natasha.

“Yeah, we weren’t working on anything dumb, like time-travel or space portals...” Bruce muttered into his wine glass.

“You were down there with him.” Pepper mentioned pointedly.

“Babysitting him.”

“I thought that’s why you called Maria down there?” Natasha drained her glass.

“We called Maria down because she’s the only person we know who’s seen inside the New Mexico facility before it blew up.” Tony explained.

“It didn’t blow up. It kinda blew in. Also, Clint’s seen it, he was there.”

“Oh, right, we shoulda called Bird Brain in from wherever he is, playing family with his… with his…”

“Family.” Bruce supplied.

“Family! Yes! Thank you!” Tony pointed at Bruce. “Also, Bird Brain probably would have been smart enough to stay out.”

“You  _ called her down there _ .” Pepper groaned.

“She didn’t have to come  _ into _ the Laser Lab.” Tony said blankly.

Pepper rolled her eyes, “Yes, she could have yelled at you from the safety of the elevator. A practice we should all engage in.”

“You know what, it doesn’t matter how she got de-aged-” Bruce began, but Natasha interrupted him.

“Oh yes it does. Not sure if either of you are aware, but I’m going to maim you both when this is over.”

“Oh! You’ve been upgraded! It was murder a few hours ago.” Pepper hummed happily from her end of the counter.

“She can’t murder us because she’s going soft. That too-small-to-be-a-five-year-old has turned the Big Bad Black Widow into a big mushy pile of feelings.”

Bruce snorted tiredly and giggled, “Yeah, feelings!”

Tony smushed his cheeks with his hands and made sing-song baby noises. Bruce was quick to join in.

Natasha looked over to Pepper and rolled her eyes. “Alright you two idiots-”

A shriek echoed from the hall. Before Pepper could even get off her chair Natasha had disappeared in the direction of Maria’s room.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I'd like to say how humbled I am by all the wonderful kind reviews and comments. I appreciate any and all feedback, but it's particularly gratifying to hear the positive reviews, and I can't say it enough: thank you!
> 
> I should warn you that my update schedule is about to get upset by some IRL commitments. So, I'm posting two more chapters tonight, hoping to hold everyone's interest for a few days. I finally have an end in mind for this story, and most of it is written, so I promise it won't go dark, but there may be a stretch before the next post.
> 
> I'm still using myself as a beta, so all mistakes are mine, and I still haven't taken over the MCU, so that is not mine. Enjoy!

Natasha was already through the doorway before she thought of announcing her presence. The last thing she wanted to do was scare Little Maria even more. It wouldn’t have mattered. Maria was sitting up in bed, gasping for air like she had just run a mile, rocking back and forth, her balled up fists pressed against her eyes.

Natasha felt an uncomfortable twist in her gut. Sympathy and guilt and concern were still relatively new feelings for Natasha. Her SHIELD deprogramming had cleared up the haze of indifference that Natasha remembered for so many decades, but it couldn’t replicate the experience of real emotions, so Natasha had to build most of those from scratch. It was apparently just as uncomfortable for everyone around her -  most of the SHIELD senior agents, and  _ all  _ of the younger agents, had avoided her as much as possible, back when there was a SHIELD. When Fury sent her to spy on Iron Man, it was the first time she’d been sent in with a full arsenal of emotional skills and weapons in hand - and the permission to use them as she saw fit. Working with the Avengers had further unlocked feelings she was surprised to find she had, including the really sucky ones that had her near tears after she had knocked Clint unconscious aboard the Helicarrier.

Maria had never avoided her though. From the beginning, she spoke to Natasha like she spoke to everyone else. And before Natasha had broken her habit of sneaking up on everyone, and routinely sneaked up on everyone, Maria was the only one aside from Clint who never had the fleeting look of panic on her face when Natasha startled her. No fear, just sheer annoyance that Natasha had gotten the drop on her. Maria ended up being one of Natasha’s favorite sparring partners for that same reason.

But these days, Natasha was well-versed in the extent of human emotion, even if she did occasionally slip back into patterns of what Tony called “robot lite”. She had built her own family, her very own set of people, and they were important to her. They made her happy, mostly, although Tony tested that theory on a daily basis. They made her feel calm and recently, in Maria’s case, they made her feel some weird heart-pounding thing that Clint kept calling gross and Laura insisted was true love.

Right now, staring at Little Maria, terrified and hurting, all Natasha felt was crushing sadness and the weight of inadequacy as she knelt next to the bed, needing to soothe away the tears, the hitched breath, the shaking.

“Maria?” she spoke softly.

She waited until Maria had made some acknowledgement of her presence before she reached a hand out to lay against the girl’s back. Maria didn’t flinch away, but the tremors running through her didn’t slow down either.

“Did you have a bad dream?” Natasha queried, voice still barely above a whisper.

A long beat, and then a nod from Maria, her face still hidden behind her fists.

“I have bad dreams a lot,” Natasha said, and then raised her eyebrows in surprise. She hadn’t really intended to say that out loud.

Maria hiccuped hard and peeked out from behind her fists. Natasha ducked her head to be directly in Maria’s line of sight and smiled.

“Do you want some water?”

Maria shook her head silently.

“Um… I could tell you another bedtime story?”

Another shake of the head, and a fresh round of rubbing roughly at her eyes. Natasha sighed. She so wasn’t cut out for this.

“Okay,” Natasha announced with faked confidence, “c’mere sweetheart.” She held her hands out expectantly.

It was the first time all day she had called Maria by a pet name. Her common diminutive for Maria had almost tumbled out of her mouth on a number of occasions, but it seemed like there must be a line there that she shouldn’t cross, calling a child by the same name she used for her adult girlfriend.

Little Maria looked up at Natasha’s command. Her breath still hitched and hiccuped, and fresh tears were brimming, only just defying gravity for the moment. Her eyes flickered between Natasha’s hands and her face, and Natasha waited patiently for her to make a decision: did she trust Natasha enough to crawl into her arms?

Maria decided she did, but lacked the energy to do anything other than slump sideways into Natasha’s waiting arms. Natasha gathered her close, whispering, “I’ve got you.”

They were magic words. Little Maria went from boneless to full-koala in a split-second. She wrapped her arms and legs around Natasha as far as they would reach, and tucked her face against Natasha’s neck. Her hands were grasping fistfuls of Natasha’s shirt, as if she could pull them closer together if she tried hard enough.

Natasha smirked a little at the scene. Adult Maria wasn’t very tactile. Handshakes were firm and brief, hugs were practically non-existent if you weren’t a child or a grieving spouse/parent/sibling. Even sparring, Maria preferred to keep her feet, where she could impose distance between her and her opponent, rather than engaging in the tangled up grappling that Natasha willingly employed.

Natasha had seen just about every SHIELD medical officer get their hand slapped - or broken - or stabbed - while tending to the various injuries the Deputy Director had acquired over the years. The safest way for SHIELD Medical to treat Commander Hill usually involved tossing a bag of wound care supplies at her from a distance. Woe be to the officer in charge of the Med Bay when the Commander came in with injuries that she couldn’t reach herself.

Maria was certainly more lenient with Natasha, particularly since they had started “dating”, as Pepper insisted on calling it, but she still hardly ever initiated contact and definitely shied away from it in public.

Natasha stood up with Little Maria in her arms. As she straightened, Maria’s grip tightened until the girl’s muscles were shaking with the strain.

“Don’t drop me.”

The whispered words were more fervent prayer than command and if Natasha thought that her heart was aching before, it was now being torn in two right where it sat under her ribs. Natasha shifted her arms, trying to create a comforting and secure embrace without crushing Little Maria. She wished she had more arms. She rested her hand gently on the back of Maria’s head, not pushing, just encouraging the girl to burrow her face further into Natasha’s neck. Little Maria took the opportunity to wriggle her entire body closer, somehow. Natasha just tightened her embrace in response; she felt hot tears on her skin and hummed softly.

“I will never,  _ ever _ , drop you.”

Natasha walked slowly out of the small bedroom; in the hallway, where the lights had been considerately dimmed, she shot a tiny smile to a concerned Pepper and the two nervous Avengers.

“Bad dream. We’re going to head up to my apartment. Maybe read some more stories, try to sleep.”

“I’ll have JARVIS open everything, since you seem to be missing a free hand.” Pepper smirked gently. Natasha rolled her eyes and headed for the elevator, but stopped and half-turned.

“ _ Thank you _ ,” she mouthed at Pepper.

 

It was slightly disconcerting to see her apartment door swing open as she approached. It yawned slowly outwards, and a dim light glowed out of the darkness of her apartment beyond.

“Thank you, JARVIS.” Natasha mumbled as the door silently closed behind them.

Natasha walked over to her seldom used couch and eased herself down, leaning back on the cushions. Little Maria released her koala-grip on Natasha and just… melted. She lay still and limp, draped across Natasha. Natasha was about to conclude that Maria had fallen asleep when there was a soft rustling sound and Maria bolted upright, looking around for the source of the noise.

The source made itself known: Liho jumped up onto the couch and Natasha found herself an innocent bystander in a staring contest between a child and a cat.

Liho and Adult Maria engaged in just such a staring contest nearly every time Maria came over. Liho would spring up onto whatever nearby piece of furniture put her eye-level to Maria, and she would stare intently, tail swishing, always looking like she wanted to pounce. Maria would stop and stare right back at the little black cat. If Natasha didn’t interrupt their staring, or if Maria’s phone didn’t go off, or if the Tower didn’t shudder from some minor explosion from the labs, they’d stare at each other for untold minutes. Natasha had once clocked them at 18 minutes before she finally got bored and threw her shirt at Maria’s face. After the stalemate was over, each would go her own way, and they would studiously ignore each other for the rest of the time that Maria was at the apartment.

All other visitors to Natasha’s apartment got nips or scratches to their toes and ankles, or an armful of hissing and spitting fury if they were quick enough to scoop up the little black devil. If anyone made it all the way into the apartment, after Natasha nudged Liho away with her foot, the visitor would find himself or herself being stalked for the rest of the stay by two glowing yellow eyes and even an occasional low yowl. Clint had more than once insisted that Liho was a literal demon, and he refused to stay over at Natasha’s apartment anymore after once waking up on the couch in the morning to a ball of black fur hurtling toward his face, teeth bared and  _ screeching _ . So, given Liho’s distrust and histrionics towards all other guests, the staring situation with Maria was acceptable.

Liho and Little Maria eyed each other for the better part of a minute before Natasha broke the stalemate by patting her lap in invitation to Liho. Liho crept closer, still watching Maria, until she had her two front paws on Natasha’s thigh, lifting herself up to eye level with the small girl. Maria cautiously put her hand out, holding it just in front of Liho’s face. Natasha tensed.

The little black cat sniffed Maria’s fingers experimentally. Maria kept her hand still. Liho sniffed some more and finally came to a decision: the small cat rolled her head and shoved it into Maria’s hand.

A smile chased across Maria’s face as Liho head-butted and nuzzled her hand. She leaned back a bit as Liho crawled the rest of the way into Natasha’s lap, squeezing into the tiny pocket of space between Natasha and Maria. Maria was scratching behind Liho’s ears in earnest now, and the little cat tucked herself into a ball, loud purring erupting and vibrating against Natasha’s chest. Maria wiggled a bit to her side, giving Liho more room, and laid her head down against Natasha’s shoulder.

Natasha sat perfectly still, looking down at the contented pair in her lap. Maybe this whole snafu was worth it - just a little tiny bit - for moments of peace like this. Natasha pressed a kiss to the top of Little Maria’s head, and focused every sense on gathering in this memory for use in darker times: the soft shush of Little Maria’s calm breathing, Liho’s loud and steady purring, their insignificant weight against Natasha’s chest, the warmth spreading outward from their little cocoon, and the sight of Maria’s hand going still as she fell asleep, tangled gently in Liho’s fur.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter before I disappear for a few days - happy reading!
> 
> (Mistakes mine, MCU not mine.)

Natasha rubbed furiously at her eyes, unable to tell if the burning sensation came from lack of sleep or from unchecked rage, and upset with her lack of control either way.

The early morning sun was spilling across the living room and onto the counter where Natasha sat hunched over a tablet, flicking her finger angrily at the screen. She wanted to leave the Tower and sprint through the sunrise streets of New York until her lungs burned badly enough to clear her mind. She wanted to call Clint or better yet, Cap, for a no-holds barred sparring session in the private Avengers gym, where she could release this pent-up rage against something that would fight back. She wanted to drag Stark out of bed and demand he put his new time portal to good use, and send her back nearly forty years, so she could issue the justice that had misfired all those years ago.

But she wouldn’t do any of those things, and she gulped huge breaths in an attempt to calm the shaking and the tension in her muscles. Little Maria was out cold, face down on the couch, tangled in a blanket Natasha had drug out from her bedroom. One tiny hand and one tiny foot hung over the side of the couch. Liho was lying between Maria and the back of the couch, her front half draped over Maria’s shoulder and neck, one paw resting on Maria’s ear.

Natasha couldn’t have left the apartment if the world was ending. For this morning at least, the world was fully encapsulated by the pair on her couch.

She opened another link on the tablet, although she had already read the entire result set once through.

After Little Maria and Liho had fallen asleep, and after two hours of tossing and turning had convinced Natasha that she  _ wasn’t _ going to fall asleep, she had found a seat at the counter - where, conveniently, she could see and hear every twitch and sigh that Maria made - and had asked JARVIS for every file he had on Former SHIELD Commander and Current Stark Industries Director of Security Operations Hill. And from there, she had dug.

Most of Maria’s records from her SHIELD days had been destroyed. After the data dump that Natasha had helped initiate after the attempted HYDRA coup, Maria and a few trusted others had gone on the offensive and hunted down and removed as much as they could.

Most of Maria’s Marine records had been redacted heavily enough to render them useless. Natasha figured that had happened back when Maria first joined SHIELD. Fury (and Pierce and the senior Stark, and Carter before him) had always been very careful about the information available to the public, and redaction was common enough to be a running joke amongst former SHIELD agents.

There had even been a half-hearted attempt to wipe out the records pertaining to Maria’s childhood, although it only took JARVIS twenty minutes to reconstruct the bulk of them. Natasha guessed that Adult Maria had been practicing her early SHIELD career hacking skills on her own background. They were the thinnest section of Maria’s overall file, but they ended up being the most damning.

Because she refused to leave the apartment, Natasha vented her rage into three deep grooves now carved into her kitchen counter, one for every time Maria Hill had been referred to Child Services.

Age four.

Age seven.

Age eleven.

By the grace of God or some other higher power, the files were poor facsimile copies and did not include photos.

Natasha had distracted herself from the heartburn of the referrals themselves by tracking down the current whereabouts of those involved. Out of three different Child Services agents, two were deceased and a third was in a nursing home in upstate New York, suffering from dementia. Most of Maria’s former teachers and neighbors were deceased, at least those from her earliest years. A handful of high-school teachers were alive and well, but from what Natasha could glean from small-town newspaper articles and hacked Facebook pages of classmates, high-school Maria had already started behaving like SHIELD Maria, and didn’t appear to be someone that you wanted to mess with.

There was set of links that JARVIS had offered up somewhere around 2 am that Natasha had studiously avoided until she broke down somewhere around 4 am. Maria’s father.

Natasha didn’t remember her own parents, and between Clint and Cap and Tony she certainly wasn’t under any illusions that “normal” parenthood was all that normal either, but until she had finally clicked on the first link, she had held desperately to the idea that something radically awful and unexpected had occurred in Little Maria’s life to send it off on this terrifying trajectory. Instead, she found a handful of articles about a heartbroken widower, a few arrests scattered over the next twenty years, and an uneventful death to liver cirrhosis a few years after that.

It was an anti-climactic result for an assassin turned super-spy turned superhero who wanted nothing more than to  _ do _ something. But there was nothing left to do. The people and the circumstances of the past that drove Little Maria’s nightmares were gone. They couldn’t be erased, and they couldn’t be forgotten, but they couldn’t be resolved, either. They just were.

Natasha groaned into her hands. Why did she even care this much? It was over. Maria had fought her way through adversity, just like Natasha had, and now they were on the other side, and things were fine.

Fine, except for the child currently sleeping on Natasha’s couch, who wasn’t actually on the other side yet.

 

Somehow, she kept getting cuter. Little Maria was sitting at the breakfast bar again, eating waffles with her hands (Tony’s idea), face and hair smeared with syrup and Nutella (mostly Tony’s fault), giggling at Tony’s antics (the entire morning was Tony’s doing, really), and Natasha couldn’t stop staring at her. She was a cute kid even when she was looking morose or annoyed or critically studying the people around her, but just like Adult Maria, when she smiled it was like a blast of happiness. Even the little smiles transformed her face. Tiny almost-dimples appeared in her cheeks, her eyes crinkled and Natasha felt like the happiness and joy were tangible things that might rub off if Maria allowed someone to get close enough. Her laugh was even more infectious. It wasn’t a full blown laugh, it was a giggle, and Natasha heard in it the same cadence that would become Adult Maria’s low chuckle that Natasha likewise adored, and likewise hardly ever got to hear. Natasha had decided, here, this morning, sitting at this counter, watching Little Maria be a happy child, that if - no, not if,  _ once _ \- they got things back to normal, her new life goal would be to make Adult Maria smile and laugh as often as possible.

The fourth waffle had just disappeared from Maria’s plate, and she reached up to shove her unruly hair away from her face, leaving a streak of Nutella from cheek to ear. Natasha sighed and got up to retrieve a washcloth.

“-and then the panther started chasing me, and I had to hide in a closet, only it wasn’t a closet, it was a magic box that would-”

“Alright, enough fables.” Natasha cut Tony off as she sat down on the chair next to Maria.

“It’s not a fable! That happened!”

“It wasn’t a panther, it was a cat. It was  _ Liho _ . And you hid in the elevator.” Natasha raised her eyebrows conspiratorially at Maria as she ruined Tony’s story, and was rewarded with a squeak of laughter and a tiny smile.

Natasha gently cupped Maria’s chin in one hand and tilted the small face up as she wiped at the sticky, chocolaty mess. Little Maria didn’t flinch away, or lower her eyes, or go cautiously still. She just sat quietly, allowing Natasha to turn her face this way and that under the wet cloth.

“Sooo, whatcha wanna do today, pipsqueak?” Tony casually interrupted from across the kitchen.

Maria sat back in her chair and looked blankly at Tony. Tony raised an eyebrow and stared back. ”Well?”

Little Maria heaved her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, “Well  _ I _ don’t know!”

Natasha smothered a laugh.

Everyone had a different approach to dealing with Tony. Language was a front-line weapon for him, and he could shift from suave, to smart, to snark, to sincere and back again in the same sentence. Steve tried to categorically address (and conquer) each point, an approach with which Tony usually got bored quickly. Clint went full-on teenage testosterone humor, which was amusing, but annoying in its own right. Banner only bothered to engage with Tony at an intellectual level. Fury tended towards yelling and muttered curse words, and Natasha simply issued threats - verbal or otherwise - when Tony got mouthy with her.

Maria, despite her insistence that Stark drove her nuts and she’d rather jump off the Helicarrier than hold a conversation with him, seemed to take a perverse amount of pleasure in talking to the man. She was quick enough to twist his snarky comments back at him, smart enough to know all the right buttons to push, and just malicious enough to actually push them. And the truly hilarious thing was that Tony, despite his insistence that Commander Pill was a pain in his ass and someone he didn’t care to talk to, seemed to take an equally perverse amount of pleasure getting into ridiculous arguments with her.

Maybe Natasha had found another hint of Adult Maria in this tiny little girl at the breakfast counter, giving Tony the “I’m innocent” look with her baby blues.

Tony wagged a scolding finger at Maria and grabbed the syrup bottle, playfully advancing. “I think we all know what happens when we leave these kind of decisions up to me!”

“Don’t you get more syrup on her, Stark!” Natasha warned.

Tony didn’t back off, so Natasha turned her back to Maria, “Quick, hop on!”

Maria flung herself onto Natasha’s back, wrapping her arms and legs tightly around the assassin.

Not only had Little Maria been smiling and giggling since she woke up this morning, she had been  _ tactile. _ It was as if the late night post-nightmare hug had unlocked a different child. Natasha had spent the morning reinforcing the lesson: Little Maria was safe here, loved, allowed to be happy and playful.

“Oh, that’s how we’re gonna play it? You’re gonna gang up on me? C’mon pipsqueak, you know I’m way more fun than Natasha Bossy Pants.”

“Your syrup is dripping.” Maria pointed out sagely from Natasha’s back. This time Natasha laughed out loud, a full belly laugh that had her crouching over to keep her balance.

Tony wiped the surprised look off his face, “We’ll see who’s laughing when they’re covered in Vermont’s finest.”

“Tony!” Natasha shrieked as Tony brandished the syrup bottle.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, friends, but we're back! This chapter is on the short side, but I'm back on schedule and plan to post a couple of longer chapters over the weekend. I think we're getting near the end, although when I started writing this I also thought it was going to be a two-chapter baby plot-bunny.
> 
> In any case, thanks for sticking around, and as always thanks for the kind comments!
> 
> I don't own any of these characters; I own all of the mistakes.
> 
> Oh - and there's some language at the end of this chapter.

Pepper took a deep breath as the elevator doors slid open on the Avenger’s common room. She felt bad about leaving Little Maria alone with Tony and Natasha this morning. One was already the oldest child she had  _ ever _ known, and the other seemed on the fence about whether children were poisonous or she were poisonous to children.

Pepper had a backlog of critical issues that fell to her to deal with since her Director of Security Operations was currently a child, and Bruce had begged off to go back to the lab and look at some new data sent over by Doctor Foster. Really, Pepper couldn’t disagree with him, because eventually they were going to have to return Maria to her proper age.

So she had told Tony that she was going to the office, and would try to be done early, and that he was to go to the kitchen immediately and prepare a healthy breakfast for Natasha and Maria, and that he was to not scare Maria, or antagonize Natasha, or bother Bruce, or interrupt her, or blow anything up. And that he if could manage all of those things until 3 pm, he would be handsomely rewarded. They both knew it was a long shot.

But JARVIS hadn’t informed her of any emergencies, so she was cautiously optimistic that she’d find all of them alive and fed, and if she was really lucky, still on speaking terms.

Pepper stepped out of the elevator and slumped in resignation. The parts of the room visible from the landing - most of the kitchen, part of the common area - looked like a tornado had hit. A tornado made of syrup, whipped cream, Cheerios, feathers, Skittles, paper airplanes (where did  _ this many _ paper airplanes come from?), pieces of Iron Man suits, and glitter. Pepper counted at least four water-guns and two Nerf bows, and Nerf suction arrows covered the walls and windows. The makings of a pasta buffet were scattered among the makings of a waffle extravaganza, as evidenced by puddles of tomato sauce and syrup and noodles (both wet and dry) scattered across the kitchen counters.

As Pepper moved closer to the common room, she could tell furniture had been moved around. A few steps nearer brought her in sight of one of the couches turned on its end to serve as the primary support strut for a pretty epic looking fort. Blankets and sheets extended across the entire sunken section of the common room, peaking and dipping at odd points where they met other structures. Soft voices were coming from one side of the fort.

Pepper moved slowly around the edge of the sunken area, trying to mask the sound of her heels. As she cleared one corner of the fort - and what looked to be a sprung booby trap, if the pile of glitter on the floor was any indication - all sense of annoyance with the epic mess fled her mind.

On the floor in front of her was maybe the most precious thing she had ever seen.

Natasha was sprawled on her side, pressed up against an upside down couch. Her feet and ankles were encased in Iron Man rocket boots - probably a fair bet for how a singe mark had appeared on the wall. She had pillowed her head on one bent arm, and the other was curled around Little Maria, tucking the girl to her chest. Natasha’s eyes were closed, although Pepper doubted she was sleeping.

Little Maria, leaning back against Natasha, had one hand encased in an Iron Man gauntlet, clutching Natasha’s arm. The other hand she was using to point at the holo-display spread out in front of her. Tony was lying on his stomach next to the girls, kicking his bare feet lazily in the air. He had tilted the holo-screen so that he and Maria could both see it and touch it, and they appeared to be… building Iron Man suits together?

“Put a blaster here.” Maria’s voice was small and soft, but confident, as she used her finger to drag a holographic icon a few inches to the right. It locked in place.

“Good idea. But remember our rule about balance? If one blaster goes there…” Tony reached up and spun the figure just a bit, watching it holographically wobble.

“Other side!” Maria happily drug an identical icon across the screen and the wobble stopped.

“That’s great, pipsqueak. That’s exactly where I actually put the blasters. Wanna take another test flight?”

At Maria’s nod, the screen abruptly shifted to a very life-like view of a city from far above. The tiny Iron Man suit had shifted into a prone flying mode, and a slight push of Maria’s hand sent it moving.

Pepper watched in fascination as Little Maria carefully steered the tiny holographic Iron Man around the city, Tony calling out obstacles she could blast along the way.

“Hey, watch out for that building.”

Maria ignored his warning and piloted the speeding Iron Man through what turned out to be an open air plaza in the middle of a building. Tony stared at her.

“How did you know that was there?”

“It looked weird,” Maria muttered, laser-focused on the holographic game.

Pepper watched for a few more moments before clearing her throat gently. Three pairs of eyes swiveled to look at her.

Natasha blinked twice and then went back to pseudo-napping. Tony grinned proudly, waving his hand around in a “see what I’ve done here?” gesture. Maria smiled shyly and gave a little wave.

Huh. Maybe children were the key to Tony’s maturity.

 

After the excitement of last night’s dinner, and the hi-jinks of the day’s earlier meals, dinner started out a positively sedate affair. Nobody felt like cooking - or cleaning up the mess from breakfast and lunch - so Tony ordered in Thai food, called Bruce up from the lab, and they all gathered in the Avengers’ kitchen to eat.

Adult Maria loved Thai food, and Little Maria, though a bit cautious, was game to try it. She was munching contently through a lemongrass curry while Bruce described excitedly how close he was to a solution to their predicament. And then Maria bit down on a chunk of lemongrass. Her face contorted in disgust and she leaned over and spit the offending mouthful into the nearest dish. Which happened to be Natasha’s Tom Ka Gai.

Bruce choked on his water, trying not to laugh, and Tony pounded twice on his back before realizing who he was hitting, and calling in the Iron Man suit as reinforcements, “just in case”.

As soon as she spit it out, Maria realized her mistake and went very still, watching Natasha carefully. Natasha for her part stared back in surprise as an Iron Man suit noisily assembled behind her. Her first instinct had been to react in outsized faux outrage. If it had been Adult Maria - which was a terribly hysterical thought all its own - Natasha would have shoved her off her chair, which probably would have resulted in an impromptu wrestling match which probably would have resulted in.... other things. But she had immediately tamped down that reaction and the second thought that had popped into her head was to brush it off and keep her voice light and calm and hug Maria and make sure she didn’t feel threatened or unsafe. But it was the third thought that flashed through her mind that really threw Natasha for a loop: maybe she should reprimand her.

Children needed boundaries, and Maria didn’t get a free pass just because she’d had - was having? - a shitty childhood. Natasha should gently but firmly scold her and make sure she understood that even disgusting food didn’t allow her to express that type of behavior. Maria would benefit in the long run from some rules. And immediately on the heels of that thought, Natasha remembered mind was that Maria wasn’t actually a child, and furthermore, she certainly wasn’t  _ Natasha’s _ child, and what right did Natasha have coming up with rules that may or may not influence Maria’s future behavior, and why was she so invested in the first place in how some child would turn out who wasn’t her child, and why was she focused on the long-game at all, when Maria would be back to her proper age (and table manners) as soon as Bruce and Tony came up with a remedy, and why were those two idiots sitting up here eating dinner like a big happy family when they should be down in the lab trying to reverse the de-aging of Stark Industries’ Director of Security Operations and former Deputy Director of one of the largest security and/or espionage outfits in the whole damn world, and why did Natasha  _ care _ so fucking much?

Natasha felt a hand on her shoulder and bolted off the stool. She was shaking, the walls felt like they were closing in, the temperature seemed to have spiked twenty degrees in this damn room, and everyone was  _ staring _ at her.

“I- I need to go.”

And with that, Natasha spun and sprinted into the stairwell.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I'd really like to know what you guys think about this chapter. In my head, this was all just Natasha's inner monologue, but I really needed her to have a conversation with someone, and then I started writing and this happened. I super hope you enjoy it! Also, I don't think I need a language warning with this rating, but, yes, there are bad words.
> 
> Still don't own all of these wonderful creatures. Kinda wish I did, except I'd just drag them endlessly through the angst-pool and they deserve some happiness.

She was in so much trouble.

Natasha scrabbled her hand around in the sand until she found a tiny shell, and then petulantly threw it at the water. The sky was brightening in front of her and she wanted the sun to stay where it was beneath the horizon. Light felt like just one more thing coming to expose her.

Fleeing Stark Tower, Natasha had decided to “borrow” one of the company sedans in the parking garage. She had driven until she hit the ocean near Montauk, and then had walked until the water hit her knees. And there she had stood for hours, raging silently at the ocean that never responded.

Her phone had pinged non-stop; Pepper, Tony, Bruce, even Clint who had texted around 2am to say that Tony was spinning him some bullshit story about her and Maria and that he was just checking in to make sure Natasha was okay. Natasha had responded with a single word: “fine”. About an hour after that, she had chucked her phone as hard as she could into the waves.

The tide was going out, and Natasha had sat down in the wet sand, watching the water slowly retreat from her toes. She hadn’t bothered to put on shoes before leaving the tower.

She heard a car pull in somewhere behind her. The engine cut out, a door opened and closed. Yep, that was trouble.

Natasha decided to let it come to her. She sat stubbornly facing the sea.

Someone approached across the sand and hesitated when they reached Natasha. There were rustling noises as shoes were pulled off, and then a jacket was flung down next to where Natasha sat, and then Pepper was gracefully lowering herself down to the sand.

The two women sat in silence until the sun started to burn at the edge of the horizon. Pepper held out a pair of sunglasses. Natasha stared at them dumbly for a long moment.

“Just put them on,” Pepper sighed, sounding supremely exhausted. Natasha complied, and silence reigned again.

Several minutes passed, and Natasha was actually starting to relax when Pepper spoke again.

“I won $50 dollars. I was the only one who said you wouldn’t leave New York.”

Natasha was caught off guard enough by the simple statement to protest, “But I did leave New York.”

Pepper shook her head, “Not the state, and they never specified the city. I win.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow in surprise, “Huh. I bet you win a lot of arguments that way.”

Pepper nodded agreeably, “I do. It pays to pay attention to the details.”

“You probably should have bet bigger.”

“Oh, I have some other bets I’m going to cash in on. Tony said you wouldn’t talk to me, yet here we are.”

Natasha ground her teeth in a sudden flash of burning annoyance. Annoyance that Tony and Pepper were making bets about her, annoyance that Tony should have been right, because a few months ago Natasha wouldn’t have bothered to engage in a conversation that she couldn’t gain something from, and now she was apparently making small talk and when had  _ that _ become a thing she did?

Pepper took a careful breath into the silence and started, “Look, I know this must be really difficult for y-”

“You know  _ nothing  _ about me.” Natasha snarled, glaring at Pepper.

“Don’t start with me.” Pepper snapped right back. “Tony might be afraid of you, but I’m not. I’ve seen the footage of the Chitauri Invasion, I know you act like that’s the only personality you have, but I’m not stupid. I don’t believe for one second that you’re some dangerous unhinged weapon,  _ Natalie. _ ”

“You don’t think I’m capable of playing a role like Natalie?” Natasha questioned harshly.

“I think you’re eminently capable of playing a role, and I think when you don’t have a role to play, you’re not really sure what to do with yourself. But more importantly, you’re forgetting that I know Maria, and I know she wouldn’t date a sociopath.”

“What if Maria just doesn’t know I’m a sociopath?” Natasha’s reply was quick, but all the fight had gone out of her voice, and she dropped her forehead to her knees, not willing to look at Pepper.

“Oh boy,” Pepper heaved a sigh, “that’s a lot to unpack right there, but let’s start with the fact that you just called your girlfriend dumb.”

“I did not!” Natasha yelped, jerking her head up.

“You’re not a sociopath, Natasha. I know you were brainwashed for a long time, and I’m sure some really horrendous stuff happened, but you weren’t the one making the choices. You weren’t in control of your own life, but now you are, and yes, if you think Maria can’t tell the difference, then you are implying that she’s dumb.”

Natasha was quiet, drawing random squiggles in the sand next to her.

“Are you… are you worried that you’re not good enough for Maria?”

Natasha gave an exaggerated roll of her head, “Are we having girl talk now, Pepper?”

Pepper shrugged, “Apparently no more than Maria and I do.”

“Wait, you and Maria talk?”

“Natasha, we work together, it’s pretty necessary that we talk-”

“No, I mean, you  _ talk _ talk?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Does she… talk about me?”

Pepper put her thumb and middle finger to her temples, squeezing, “Jesus, the Avengers don’t need a tower, they need a high school.”

“Never mind.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I just forget sometimes. I forget you’re all so…”

“Broken? Damaged? Scarred? Hopeless?”

“I was going to say weird.”

Natasha shrugged. The silence held for a minute or so and then Pepper laughed softly.

“Well, might as well.”

Natasha looked at her questioningly.

“Bruce and Tony are going to fix this, then you’re going to kill them, then Maria will kill me for talking to you about her… I hope the two of you won’t dismantle JARVIS though.”

“Eh, he was mostly an innocent bystander. Although he does know an awful lot about getting children to go to sleep. Is there something I should know?”

Pepper shook her head, “I think that’s how he gets Tony to sleep.”

“Ah… makes sense.” A second passed, two; the sun was fully free of the horizon and light shattered and sparkled across the the ocean. “So, does Maria talk about me?”

Pepper laughed, “Yes, Natasha, she does.”

“ _ Really? _ ” Natasha’s voice rose an octave.

“Yes, really. Why is that so surprising?”

Natasha considered the question, “I don’t know. I guess I just… thought…”

Pepper looked at her strangely, “Natasha, she likes you. A lot. A lot, a lot. What did you think was going on, a… a pity relationship or something?”

Habit told Natasha to stop responding, but she felt strangely comfortable and relaxed, sitting in cool, damp sand, running on no sleep, being blinded by early morning sun and interrogated by a woman who not long ago had declared - and Natasha believed it - that she was not afraid of her.

“It’s my first real relationship I guess. The first one I’ve chosen, anyway. I don’t really know how they’re supposed to go.”

That stopped Pepper short, and she stared at Natasha for a long moment, mouth opening and then closing again.

“Oh. I didn’t know that. But that makes more sense.”

“What, that I have no idea what I’m doing?”

“No, that Maria has no idea what she’s doing.”

“What?”

Pepper bit down on her tongue. She really shouldn’t be breaking Maria’s confidence like this. Pepper didn’t have any close confidantes other than Tony (and even he was questionable); she and Maria weren’t girl friends in the traditional sense of gossip and giggling over romantic partners, but they had always shared a mutual respect given their positions, and within a few weeks of Maria working at Stark Industries, they had developed an easy friendship. They provided each other a sounding board or a sympathetic ear, depending on the situation, and Pepper trusted Maria more than anyone else on her staff to be able to deal with the unpredictable nature of Tony Stark and the chaos that surrounded him. Maria had also strengthened their hand when it came to the international politics of world security, and as happy as Pepper was to let Maria go intimidate foreign leaders, she suspected it made Maria even happier, after so many years of standing carefully and quietly in the background. And when they sat together every other evening or so, drinking wine, barefoot after a long day of bending foreign and domestic policy to their will, chasing after stolen alien technology, and rescuing Tony from one mishap or another, was it so odd that they would talk about other things as well?

“She asked me what to do when you started flirting with her.”

“Really?” Natasha looked both horrified and eagerly interested.

“Yes. She thought you might just be playing with her. But you kept flirting. Poorly, I might add.”

“Hey, if I had wanted to be suave and charming, I could have been. But then I really would have been playing her. I didn’t want her to like Natalie, or Anya, or Kate, or any of my covers. I wanted her to like me.” Natasha trailed off at the end, barely audible, burying her face in her knees.

Pepper smirked, “That’s what I told her. And lucky for you, she does.”

“Does what?”

“Like you. You, Natasha.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh my God. Natasha, if this was just some casual thing for her, do you think she would have cared if you were playing a role?”

Natasha looked up at Pepper, faintly alarmed at not knowing the correct answer. Pepper answered for her, “No, Natasha. No she would not care that you were playing a role unless she were really invested in you. Not to mention the fact that she was insanely relieved you were talking to her at all.”

Natasha’s expression morphed into confusion, “What?”

Pepper mentally threw up her hands. In for a penny, in for a pound. “She thought that you thought that she thought that you were HYDRA and that you were mad at her.”

“Wait…” Natasha attempted to unscramble that sentence, using the extra moment to sort through what Pepper could and could not know.

“When SHIELD went down. You and Steve went into hiding when Fury died, and Maria wasn’t able to locate you until it was time to bring down INSIGHT.”

Natasha nodded slowly, still trying to figure out what Pepper would know from the media and what Maria must have told her.

“You disappeared after that, and you didn’t contact anyone when you came back to testify to Congress. Maria was worried that you thought she didn’t know that you weren’t HYDRA. That you thought she didn’t trust you.”

Natasha pondered this, no longer stalling for time, just examining her memory. The fall of SHIELD had been a very different experience for each of them, but Natasha was positive that she never felt suspicion from Maria.

“I never thought that. I wasn’t mad at her. It was just best to lay low for awhile.”

Pepper nodded sagely, as thought discussing the rationale behind choosing the life of a fugitive was a conversation she’d had many times.

“I think she figured that out. Around the time a mountain of house plants showed up in her office.”

Natasha grinned, “That wasn’t bad flirting, and I’d do it again.”

“But, house plants?”

“Does Maria really strike you as a roses person?”

Pepper shrugged amiably, “Half of those plants had very sharp thorns, you know.”

“That was the point!”

“You two really are weird.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment; Pepper tilted her face up and let the sun warm her skin.

“So, do you think you’ll have kids?”

Natasha was already sitting, but she nearly rocked over backward in surprise. She did manage to choke on air as she rushed to reply.  “ _ What the hell?! _ ”

Pepper held up her hands in surrender, “I just thought… maybe… that’s why you were being so strange around Little Maria.”

The tension flooded back in, and Natasha glared at Pepper, “I’m sorry I didn’t have the wherewithal to act  _ normal _ around my five year old girlfriend, I guess it wasn’t something I really prepared for this week.”

“I’m sorry, I get it, I didn’t mean- of course you weren’t prepared.” Pepper paused and tried to let some of the heated anxiety drain away. “I just thought maybe it would be extra strange, if you two had been talking about it, to see a mini-Maria.”

“Pepper, we _ just now _ established that Maria might actually be committed to this, and she apparently doesn’t know that  _ I’m  _ not just playing around, and it’s not like I can talk to her about it right now, oh, and we’re fucked up enough to need a relationship interpreter, thanks for that, but sure, kids are an appropriate conclusion to jump to, why not, because we both know that I’d be a great parent based on the last 48 hours- no, you know what, I don’t want to talk about this right now. Or ever. With you or anyone else.” Natasha was seething.

“Natasha, I’m sorry. I was trying to be funny. But I shouldn’t have said that. I’m really sorry.” Pepper spoke softly, honestly.

Natasha sat in stony silence for a few minutes. She finally spoke, mumbling, “I acted strange around her because I don’t know how to act normal around her. Because what if I don’t get her back?”

Pepper was startled to hear a thickness in Natasha’s voice.

“Natasha, Tony and Bruce  _ will _ fix this. You have to believe that.”

Natasha spoke again as if she hadn’t heard Pepper, “You said I knew how to handle kids because I was around Clint’s kids. But that’s different. I’m never with them alone. I’m never the responsible one. And Clint’s kids are so  _ happy _ . I think… I don’t think Maria had a very pleasant childhood.”

Pepper sighed, “No, I don’t think so either.”

“I tried to look up her records, but a bunch of them had been erased. But JARVIS was able to piece together a lot for me. Maybe I’m not supposed to know. Maria erased those records. If she wanted me to know, she would have just told me, right? What if she finds out I know?”

Pepper sighed heavily, “Natasha, Maria didn’t erase those records, I did.”

Natasha stared at her, dumbfounded.

“When we were drawing. After Maria finally started drawing with you. I thought- she seemed so afraid of us, and so  _ small _ . I pulled up her records on the tablet, and then I thought I should tell you, but you two were just sitting together, talking and looking so peaceful. And… Maria won’t remember any of this, but it just seemed like I could get rid of those records, and you would never know, and then you could just remember her like this.”

It was now Pepper’s voice that sounded choked with tears, and all of Natasha's relaxed comfort had disappeared and she felt dangerously vulnerable, sitting on the beach in the middle of the morning, having this conversation. She needed to know more just as badly as she wanted to know less.

“Tell me what you erased, Pepper.” Natasha’s voice was rough but unwavering.

Pepper took a shaky breath, “Her father apparently didn’t feed her. Who knows how the hell she survived when she was a baby. Maybe he did feed her then. I don’t know, there weren’t any records until the first time they called Child Services. Her daycare called, because they thought she was going to starve to death. She must have learned to feed herself at some point.”

“The next time… Natasha, the report had pictures, and I told JARVIS erase them and I can’t get them back and I wouldn’t let you see them anyway. She tried to run away. She was seven. She got forty-five miles away before police in the next town over found her. She told them she got in a fight at school. I guess they believed her. They sent her home. Then she really did get into fights at school. She was starting them. She got suspended four times in one year and ended up changing schools.”

“She called Child Services herself when she was eleven. Claimed it was a prank when they showed up. She was out of school for three and a half weeks shortly after that. No pictures, no hospital records. Maybe she did erase those.”

Pepper stopped talking. She wiped tears away from her face, but stayed silent, waiting for Natasha to do or say… something. Nothing came.

“Natasha, can I ask you a question?”

Natasha shrugged, but didn’t reply.

“Are you in this for real? Because I think Maria is, and if you’re using this as a… a practice relationship…”

“What? You'd kill me?”

Pepper sighed, “Why do all of you default to threats of homicide? Why can’t you threaten the silent treatment or something? Was that a SHIELD thing? Killing anyone you got mad at?”

“Pepper, I don’t know what this is, but when I figure it out, I owe Maria an answer before you.”

“That… that actually sounds very appropriate." Pepper nodded approvingly. "You know, she fought back, Natasha.”

The assassin looked at Pepper for the first time in minutes, curious.

“By the time she hit high school… she had excellent grades, and she won just about every academic award the school had. And there are no more hospital records. She fought back, and she got out, and look where she is now. Oh, and she also kicked Tony in the shin last night.”

Natasha burst into laughter, triggering Pepper to break into exhausted giggles as well. The sheer emotion of the morning caught up to both of them and it took several minutes for the two women to calm down.

“Oh yeah, you should have seen it. She was having a meltdown because you weren’t there for bedtime, and Tony tried to pick her up so she kicked him. I think he almost cried.”

Natasha smiled at the story, but also felt a rush of shame heat her face. “I shouldn’t have left her.”

Pepper sighed heavily, “Probably not. None of us could get her to go to bed. She didn’t fall asleep until we were halfway here.”

Natasha’s surprised look was almost enough to start Pepper laughing again. “You brought her with you?”

“You think I’d leave her with  _ Tony _ ?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, please please forgive me! I did not mean to leave it this long! I'm back on schedule starting now, and planning to post a couple more chapters over the weekend.
> 
> Remember when I said I had most of this story already written? It wasn't a lie when I said it, I just didn't anticipate massively rewriting the entire last third because the story changed in my head. I do have an epilogue I really like though, so now it's just filling in the blanks from here to the end, right?
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me!
> 
> Don't own them; all mistakes are mine.

“What did you do, put her in the trunk?” Natasha peered into the empty backseat of Pepper’s vehicle.

Pepper rolled her eyes and opened the driver’s door. “I’m surprised she didn’t try to steal the car.”

Natasha sensed more than saw Pepper freeze next to her.

“ _Pepper_?” Natasha pushed the other woman out of the way and peered into the front seat. Empty. No need to panic. Maria had probably moved down to the floor. Natasha crawled onto the driver seat, peering to the floor, then over the seat to the floor in the back, then dangled her head over the seat to scan underneath it. Nothing. Not even mud or sand.

Natasha scrambled out of the car, spinning in a frantic circle. “Did you lock the doors?”

“Yes! Of course! But she’s a smart kid, Nat, I’m sure she can figure out how door locks work.”

‘“But where the hell would she go? There’s nothing out here!” Natasha whipped her head around to stare in horror at the ocean.

“No, hang on, stop. If she’d gone down to the beach one of us would have seen her. Plus, the road’s right here, wouldn’t it make more sense that she got out of the car and started walking up the road?”

Natasha immediately started jogging up the road, not bothering to answer.

She sucked in a deep breath, about to scream out Maria’s name, but she caught sight of a figure down the road and checked herself. The silhouette was too tall to be a child, but Natasha thought she could make out something else. She jogged faster.

As she drew closer, Natasha could tell that the figure was a woman, and as she got closer still, Natasha could make out a smaller shadow behind the woman.

“Maria!” Natasha was close enough that she barely had to raise her voice. She slowed to a stop a few feet away from the pair.

The woman was skinny, young, maybe late 20s, with bleach blonde hair pulled back in a high ponytail and decked out in workout gear that looked more stylish than functional. Maria peeked out from behind her, blue eyes lighting up when she saw Natasha.

Natasha smiled at the tiny face and held her hands out, “There you are!”

She was expecting Maria to run to her, but instead the little girl only took a single step from behind Workout Woman and cocked her head at Natasha.

Pepper came to a rather breathless stop next to Natasha, “Oh Maria! We found you!”

“How did you lose her?” Workout Woman asked.

“Oh,” Pepper waved a hand, laughing, “you know, playing on the beach.”

“It’s, like, seven in the morning. You brought your kid to the beach?” Workout Woman put a hand on her hip, managing to convey uncertainty via the tilt of her hip. Maria stood silently, studying the situation, eyes bouncing back and forth.

“Early to bed and early to rise, you know!” Pepper’s voice had modulated from genuinely friendly to her I’ll-pretend-to-like-you-and-you-won’t-print-this-story voice.

“She never said she was on the beach.”

“Did she say anything?” Natasha challenged.

This stumped Workout Woman. “Well, no. But she nods and stuff. She came right with me when I said I was going to run to the pier.”

“You weren’t going to call someone?” This was the best possible outcome and yet Natasha found herself infuriated with this irresponsible walking ponytail.

“Who did _you_ call? Shouldn’t there be like, cops and helicopters and dogs and stuff?”

“Dogs?” Little Maria piped up, dismissing the tense standoff and looking around them, spinning a small circle to make sure she didn’t miss anything.

Natasha bit her lip, but didn’t succeed in keeping the smile off her face, “Come on, sweetheart, let’s go home.”

“Hey, you can’t just take her.” Workout Woman took another shot at responsibility.

Natasha held out a hand and wiggled her fingers. This time Maria came forward and pressed her tiny hand into Natasha’s.

“It’s fine, she’s with us-”

“She’s mine.” Natasha interrupted Pepper’s faux-polite explanation firmly.

“Really? She doesn’t look anything like you.”

“Yes she- no, of course not- that’s not what I-”

Pepper took a physical step in front of Natasha and cut the shorter woman off, “It’s just like they say, all babies look like Winston Churchill. Thanks so much for watching her for us, we really appreciate it. Enjoy your jog, better get home soon in case it rains. Love those leggings, have a nice day!”

Pepper turned and hustled the other two girls back in the direction of the car.

“Rain?” Natasha looked up at the clear blue sky.

“Oh, shut up.” Pepper glanced back and then made a shooing motion, trying to put more distance between them and Workout Woman.

“What’s with you?”

“You might be an International Spy of Many Disguises and all, but Stark Industries hosts events in the Hamptons all the time, she could recognize me. The last thing we need is some rumor that Tony and I are kidnapping children.”

“She barely looked old enough to recognize Justin Bieber.”

“How do you know who Justin Bieber is?”

“Tony.”

“Of course.”

Natasha looked down and realized that their speed walking was causing Little Maria to nearly run to keep up. She slowed her pace to give the little legs a rest. “Hey, Maria.”

Her face tilted up and she squinted into the sunshine.

“You okay?”

“Yes.” Maria said, accompanying it with a shrug.

When they reached the car, Pepper’s curiosity got the better of her, “Maria, how did you get out of the car?”

Little Maria looked at her blankly for a moment before replying, “The door.”

Natasha bit down on her smile again.

“Why did you leave?”

“You left.” Maria’s words were matter-of-fact, with no hurt or accusation in them, but they still made Pepper suck in a sharp breath.

“And I was hungry.”

Guilt crashed down on Natasha. While she had been sitting on her ass on the beach, whining to Pepper, Maria had woken up alone in a car, in the middle of nowhere, starving. What if she hadn’t run into Workout Woman? How far would she have wandered in search of food? Or what if she had run into someone worse than Workout Woman?

Natasha dropped to a knee and pulled Maria slowly into her, wrapping the tiny girl into a tight hug. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. We’ll go find some breakfast right now, okay?”

Maria didn’t pull away from the hug, but she did speak into Natasha’s ear, in the same flat tone, “you left too.”

Air lodged in Natasha’s throat like a physical object. “Yeah,” she choked out, “I’m sorry about that too. Really. I won’t leave again.” She pulled Maria away far enough to look into the ice blue eyes, “I promise I won’t leave you again.”

“Okay,” Maria accepted and pushed back into Natasha’s arms, throwing her own tiny arms around Natasha’s neck.

Natasha stood up, still holding Little Maria. She turned to look at Pepper, who was wiping tears away from her the corner of her eye. “Back to the city?”

“Yes,” Pepper cleared her throat, “yes, but you two have to ride in the back.”

“What? Why?”

“Kids ride in the back.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“No, but you have one semi-permanently attached to you. Just get in the car!”

 

The three girls stepped off the elevator to the smell of grease and sugar. Bruce stood in the kitchen, wearing an apron. He flashed them a tentative smile. “JARVIS said you were on your way back to the city. I made bacon and eggs. And donuts.”

Maria squirmed excitedly and Natasha set her down, laughing as she scampered directly to what had become _her_ seat at the breakfast bar, climbing up expertly just in time to see a plate of food set down in front of her.

Little Maria grabbed a rasher of bacon and had it halfway into her mouth before stopping abruptly and looking shyly at Bruce. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

Bruce ducked his head just as shyly, smiling, “you’re welcome.”

Pepper surveyed the kitchen. “You were barely functional in here the other night. What’s all this?”

Bruce shrugged, “it’s something I know how to make.”

“Better than vegetables.” Maria spoke around a mouthful of food.

Three heads swiveled to her in shock, and then laughter erupted. Natasha pushed a chair next to Maria’s and sat down, offering her hand out for a high five. “Nice one.”

Little Maria smiled back, dropped her bacon, and slapped a greasy hand against Natasha’s. “Nice one, what?”

Something chimed loudly. Pepper grabbed a tablet from the far side of the counter.

“Oh, lovely. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you three to have all the fun. I’ve got to go down to the office.”

“Can’t you give it to one of those clean people in suits who run around here?”

“Well, normally, this is something I’d ask your girlfriend to handle, but I can’t very well put _that_ little disaster on a video conference with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, can I?” Pepper pointed at Maria, who had egg yolk smeared on her chin and the collar of her shirt, was obliviously dipping a sleeve into the egg yolk on the plate, had powdered sugar streaked from her mouth up to her ear, and had pushed her hair out of her face with the hand full of bacon grease, leaving a swath of hair oiled flat against her head.

Natasha looked down at her, stunned. “She’s been sitting there for… like… four minutes. Max. How?”

“Wish I could stick around and see how this progresses in the next four minutes, but I really do need to handle this before it becomes something I have to handle. You and Bruce will be fine for a couple of hours, I’m sure.”

“Oh, I’m not- I… ah… I’m gonna go downstairs. To the lab. With Tony. We have to figure out the ah, the… well, the…”

“Seriously, how did you get sugar in your hair? I looked away for _ten seconds_!”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of the chapters I mostly re-wrote, and now I think it's one of my favorites. Getting near the end-game now! Thanks for sticking with me, and thank you so much for all the lovely comments. They are the best way to start the day... or end the day... or prop up the middle of the day!
> 
> I hope you enjoy! Standard disclaimer from previous chapters applies.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sit down on the couch and read a story?” Natasha asked beseechingly.

“Not yet!” Little Maria proclaimed confidently, “We have to jump… across… this  _ lava _ .”

Maria launched herself off the side of the overturned couch and Natasha was barely quick enough to snag her out of the air before she face-planted into the very glass coffee table.

“Noooo!” Maria howled.

Natasha set her on her feet and received a glare in return. “Hey, I rescued you!”

“I don’t  _ need _ rescue. The lava is not  _ real _ .”

Natasha just stared at her. She had thought two days ago, when this tiny, disheveled, confused creature had crawled out of a supply cabinet, that the only sign of future Adult Maria were the blue eyes. A few more hints had since revealed themselves as she had grown more comfortable around Pepper, Tony, and Bruce, but now that Maria and Natasha were alone, after high-fives and coloring and nightmares and tears and disappearing acts and hugs and agreements both spoken and silently understood, Little Maria was unveiling all new sides of her personality, and each one of them was a miniature reflection of the future.

This was in itself a very Maria Hill thing, Natasha considered. Adult Maria took awhile - years, decades, ages,  _ forever _ \- to warm up to people, and Natasha didn’t typically get the best parts of Maria unless they were alone, or maybe in a very small and familiar group setting. Maria even tended to avoid Avengers gatherings, although that might have been because she and Natasha hadn’t yet figured out if they were a “thing” or just a thing.

Well, the Black Widow couldn’t just allow this rumor to spread: of  _ course _ she knew the difference between real and fake lava.

“But what if it is real? What if the floor is just an illusion, and we’re actually standing on a rock in the middle of a lava lake?”

“And… the rock is SINKING!” Maria leapt for the only couch that was sitting right side up, landing in the cushions with an “oomph.”

Natasha jumped the other direction, onto the overturned couch. “I think the lava is coming in from the elevator. This whole room is going to fill up! We need to turn off the lava. Isn’t there a control panel in the kitchen?”

Little Maria considered their situation. There were no more couches between them and the kitchen. She bent over and started tugging at the couch cushion she was standing on. “We are lucky these float!”

“Good idea!” Natasha cried through laughter, watching the pint-sized brunette tug for all she was worth before finally realizing that the cushion right next to her didn’t have anyone standing on it.

The cushion that Maria lugged off the couch was larger than she was, but she wrestled it over her head and shoved it onto the floor.

“Come on!” and once more she launched herself into the air. This time at least, she landed where she aimed, square in the middle of the cushion. Going directly for the objective, regardless of danger. Adult Maria trait, Little Maria trait.

Natasha jumped across to the couch Maria had been on - a good eight feet away. She smirked at the surprise on Maria’s face. “Here,” she pulled up a second cushion and tossed it in front of Maria’s, “we’ll leapfrog.”

“Hurry up!”

The two were both giggling and panting in exertion by the time they reached the kitchen. Natasha picked Maria up and set her on the counter, then hoisted herself up next to her. “Do we need to take a break before we go for the control panel?”

Little Maria peered off the edge of the counter, “Better not. The lava is getting higher.”

“Okay, then swing around, we need to get to the other side.”

Natasha didn’t realize her mistake until they had both turned, and Maria caught sight of the plate that Natasha had pushed out of sight on the back counter.

“Save the donuts!”

Natasha groaned inwardly; those damned donuts. Bruce had made enough of them to feed a baseball team, and since Pepper had left without eating and Bruce had only taken two with him when he rushed away shortly afterwards, there had been a  _ lot _ of donuts left, and Natasha didn’t think to put a cap on donut consumption until Maria was shoving a fifth one in her mouth.

“Respect the sugar high,” Natasha muttered to herself. “Okay, we can save the donuts, but we can’t eat anymore until after lunch.”

Little Maria stared at her like she had grown wings, “Why?”

 

“Hey, watch that-”

The warning came too late. The box tipped over and released an elbow macaroni waterfall.

“Oops.” Little Maria looked at Natasha from where she sat on the counter amidst the makings of lunch.

Natasha looked at the floor, where the macaroni had scattered across the parallel puddles of ketchup and mustard, casualties of the first lunch idea, hamburgers. A head of lettuce had also been involved, but it had rolled out of the kitchen and between the two, Natasha figured Little Maria was the more important one to keep an eye on.

“We should clean that up.” Maria pronounced solemnly, giving Natasha a look that clearly indicated who exactly should be cleaning.

She had a point. The avoidance of cleaning was why both girls were sitting on the counter, Natasha using the cupboards as hand-holds to acrobat her way around the kitchen.

“It’s Tony’s kitchen. He can clean it up.”

“We spilled it.”

“You spilled it,” Natasha shot back, only minorly concerned that she was arguing with a five year old.

Maria studied the floor critically. “We could get a dog to clean it.”

“Do you like dogs?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have a-” Nope. Wrong question. “Do you have a dog?”

“No,” Maria sighed.

“Do you have any pets?” This felt like dangerous territory. They’d all mostly avoided asking Maria anything about her real childhood, which was where they all assumed she was now.

Maria shook her head.

Natasha pressed, “Why not?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I can’t!” Maria’s eyes flashed in annoyance.

Huh. That was interesting. Natasha offered an olive branch, “You like Liho, right? We could share. She could belong to both of us.”

“Really?”

“Of course. We can share her chores too. I’ll feed her on weekends, and Mondays. You can feed her on Tuesdays through Fridays.”

Maria giggled, “I don’t know when it’s Tuesday!”

Natasha shrugged, she didn’t have much use for keeping track of days either; she dealt in hours, not days.

“So… what about tacos? I bet we have stuff for tacos.”

“We have to clean this  _ mess _ .”

Natasha sighed in defeat. Insisting on doing the right thing, even if it was a pain in the ass. Adult Maria trait, Little Maria trait.

 

Natasha was half asleep when her phone pinged loudly. “What,” she grumbled into the phone.

“Natasha?”

Natasha opened her eyes and realized Pepper had video called.

“Yep, it’s me. Still an adult, in case you were wondering. Still hanging out without an adult, in case you were wondering.”

Pepper shrugged helplessly. “I just called to check in. I hadn’t heard from you in a few hours.”

“And you were worried? Thought I lost her? Or let her fall in the lava? Or that maybe I ran away?”

“Wow. You’ve picked up like three new repressed issues in one day.”

Natasha softened her tone. “We’re fine. We’re reading. Well, we were.” Natasha turned the phone down to where Little Maria lay between her body and the back of the couch. At her movement, Little Maria sighed in her sleep and twisted, pressing her face into Natasha’s ribs and grabbing a handful of Natasha’s shirt. Natasha hoped fervently that this deeply buried cuddle trait was something she could eventually reintroduce to Adult Maria.

“Awwww,” Pepper’s voice echoed out of the phone. Natasha hastily swept the phone to the other side, getting a slow panorama of the common room. They hadn’t bothered to reassemble the room after turning it into a blanket fort the day before, nor had they cleaned up any of the detritus of their battle with Tony, primarily Nerf darts and glitter and paper airplanes. Little Maria’s earlier sugar high had led her and Natasha to re-imagine the fort as an obstacle course, which just expanded the footprint of the mess, including some new pieces straight from the Avengers’ gym. And that was before the lava.

Pepper choked and the “awwww” strangled into an “ohhhhhh.”

Natasha turned the phone back to herself. “Also, we’re almost out of food.”

“How is that humanly possible?”

“Not sure ‘humanly’ is the adverb you’re looking for.”

“I’ll have JARVIS do some shopping. Do you mind if I stay here for a few more hours? Some things have come up…”

“It’s fine. We’re fine.”

“Don’t let her sleep too long or else you’ll never get her to sleep tonight.”

“Don’t lecture me about sleep. You left her asleep in a car.”

“That should probably be something we don’t share with other people.”

 

“Do you want me to brush your hair?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You still have bacon grease and sugar in your hair.”

“Okay.”

“I’m pretty sure you got bacon grease in Liho’s hair.”

“Leo has  _ fur _ .”

“Liho.”

“Leo.”

“ _ Lee-Ho. _ ”

“That’s what I  _ said _ ! Leo!”

“That’s not- sure. That’s what you said.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Again? We just ate like, three hours ago.”

“But not a lot.”

“We ate a lot. We ate hamburgers.”

“Nuh-uh! The lettuce falled.”

“We ate mac ‘n’ cheese.”

“ _ Just. Cheese. _ ”

“We ate tacos.”

“I want tacos!”

“I’ll ask Pepper if we can have tacos for dinner.”

“And lemons!”

“Do you like lemons?”

“I dunno.”

“You are strange. Have you always been this strange and I just didn’t notice?”

“You are strange. Not me.”

“Well, my strange is someone else’s fault. Your strange seems to be self-created and self-sustaining.”

“What is self attaining?”

“Something I should probably work on. Pepper says we can have tacos.”

“Yes! Tacos!”

“But only if we invite Tony and Bruce.”

“Who?”

“What do you mean, ‘who’? Bruce made you breakfast this morning.”

“Oh. Can we have donuts?”

“I’m never letting you within five feet of a donut ever again. And you remember Tony, right? He’s really loud, says a lot of dumb things, has weird hair on his face? We built a fort with him yesterday.”

“Ire Man!”

“That’s not- yes. Exactly. Ire Man. Make sure you call him that at dinner, okay?”

“Mkay. Is it Tuesday?”

“No, it’s Friday. Why do you ask?”

“Leo is hungry. Is it my day?”

“Yes, technically. But I don’t think Liho is hungry. There’s food in her bowl.”

“But she is rumbling!”

“She’s purring. Because she likes cuddling with you. I think she also likes licking bacon grease off of you. Are you sure you don’t want to brush your hair before we go downstairs? You look like you’ve been outside in a hurricane.”

“No,  _ please _ .”

“You mean ‘no,  _ thank you _ ’.”

“You’re welcome.”

 

“Not. A. Word.” Natasha deposited Little Maria into her chair at the breakfast bar, glaring in turn at Pepper, Tony and Bruce, who were all struggling to hold back smiles at the sight of the legendary Black Widow looking disheveled and domestic.

“Hey, Pipsqueak!”

“Hi, Ire Man.”

“Uh, no, it’s  _ Iron _ Man.” Tony pointed a finger at Maria.

Maria studied him carefully, and then pointed her own finger back at him, pronouncing carefully, “Ire Man.”

“What- just- you- no! Iron Man!”

“That’s what I said.” Maria said, her voice heavy with exasperation as she dropped her chin into her hand, propping her elbow on the table.

“Is she- is she screwing with me? Did you put her up to this?” Tony looked to Natasha.

“Maria’s her own person, Tony. She makes her own decisions.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed, “Yeah, no, I don’t believe that. You told her to say that. Stop encouraging her! She’s already got sass for days, she doesn’t need you egging her on.”

“If you can’t handle the sass, get out of the kitchen.” Pepper chimed in, pushing on Tony’s arm as she moved past him with a plate of taco shells.

“I can handle the sass, but maybe just one at a time. When the three of you gang up on me like this, I don’t think that’s fair. Three on one is not fair.”

“You have Bruce.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t talk.”

“Hey!”

“Oh, he talks.”

“Hi Bruce.”

“Hey, kid.”

“Can I have donuts?”

“You want donuts? Sure, I can… ah…” Bruce caught sight of Natasha standing behind Maria, glaring at him and making elaborate throat cutting motions. “Well, how about donuts tomorrow? I can only make them once a day.”

“Why?”

“Uh… they’re… they’re magic donuts.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and threw up her hands in surrender.

“Magic?” Maria asked, intrigued.

“Yeah, yeah. They uh, they only work in the mornings. And they only work in this kitchen.”

“Are you a wizard?”

“Yeah Pips,” Tony interrupted, “he’s a wizard. He makes magic donuts, he turns adults into children-”

“Hey, that was half your fault.”

“And he can transform into a huge green giant!”

“Okay, that’s enough. Tony, dice these tomatoes.” Pepper valiantly attempted to keep dinner on track.

“JARVIS, dice these tomatoes.”

“Tony!”

“How do you be a giant?”

“It’s complicated.” Bruce mumbled, turning to the pantry and digging towards the back, even though Pepper and Tony had already collected everything they needed for tacos.

Maria turned to Natasha, “How does he be a giant?”

“Wow, Pipsqueak, you’re going about this all wrong. Don’t ask Natasha about complicated things, she’ll just make them more complicated.”

“Shut up, Stark.”

“Ask me, I can tell you about gamma radiation. It’s all about the science. Remember when we were building the Iron Man suits? Science. Itsy Bitsy here doesn’t do science. She just kills stuff that gets in her way.”

“TONY!”

Natasha reached over and put her hands over Little Maria’s ears. She stared murderously across the table at Tony. “Stark, what the fuck do you think you’re playing at.”

Tony shrugged petulantly, “Nothing. No, you know, I don’t get it. She follows you around like you hung the moon and stars, like you’re the safest person she’s ever known,  _ Black Widow _ . But me, she’s afraid of.”

“I  _ am _ the safest person she’s ever known.”

“Are you pouting because Maria spends more time with Natasha than you?” Pepper gaped in disbelief.

“No, but when Liar Liar Pants On Fire is telling her that Bruce and I are scary-”

“I told her no such thing.”

“Wait, I get it. You’re pouting because she was scared of you last night.”

“Oh, yeah, when her safe person  _ ran away _ .”

“Okay, stop, both of you.” Pepper slapped the table for emphasis. “Tony, Natasha doesn’t owe you an explanation for last night; she owed one to Maria, they’ve talked, and it’s in the past. Drop it. Maria wasn’t scared of you personally, so stop taking it that way. This must be confusing beyond all belief for her, and she’s currently no better at controlling her emotions than you are. Stop taking your insecurities out on the rest of us. Natasha, cut Tony some slack, it’s not like this is a familiar situation for him either. And take your hands off of her ears so I can talk to her.”

Natasha pulled her hands away.

“Maria, dinner’s ready! Do you want to make your own taco?”

“Please.” Maria nodded happily.

“You’re really good at this.” Bruce gave Pepper an admiring look.

Pepper held up a warning finger, “Don’t you start. You two are going to eat and then get your asses back down to the lab. This has got to end.”

Bruce gulped and nodded. Pepper swung around to glare at Tony, who froze with a taco halfway to his mouth. “Uh, yep. Gotta end. Copy that.”

“And you,” Pepper’s voice was pure exasperation as she turned to Natasha, “can you please handle  _ that _ ?” She pointed at Little Maria, who had filled a hard taco shell to the brim with shredded cheese, which trailed off of her plate as she brought it up to her mouth and took a loud, crunching bite.

“Maria, you have to put more than cheese in your taco.”

“Just cheese.” Maria mumbled around her mouthful.

“No, that’s not a rule, that just happened because we spilled the macaroni.”

“I spilled it.”

“True. And I cleaned it up. Now, will you please let me put some meat and vegetables in that taco?”

Maria swallowed, and looked Natasha directly in the eyes as she very slowly brought the cheese taco back to her mouth, and took a gigantic and very deliberate bite.

Doing whatever the fuck she wanted, consequences be damned. Adult Maria trait, Little Maria trait.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends, new chapter! I think one more to go... maybe two. Maybe next time I'll actually finish all the writing before the posting. :) Enjoy!
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you for the reviews. I enjoy reading your reactions!
> 
> All mistakes still mine; MCU still not mine.

Day four started inauspiciously, at 4:13 am, when Little Maria had another nightmare. She refused to go back to bed, and 5:00 am found her and Natasha drinking hot chocolate at Natasha’s kitchen counter. Well, Maria was drinking hot chocolate - Natasha’s drink was light on the chocolate and heavy on the vodka.

“Do you want to tell me what your nightmare was about?”

“No.”

Natasha paused. She couldn’t believe she was about to say this. “Are you sure? It helps to talk about them. It helps if you let somebody else share them - then maybe they won’t be so scary.”

Big blue owl eyes blinked at her, and Natasha grit her teeth. She had nightmares all the time, and if somebody ever suggested (and plenty of somebodies had) that sharing them would help them be less anything - scary, traumatic, intense, vivid - Natasha would laugh in their face. In her experience, most nightmares were memories.

Adult Maria had never asked Natasha about her nightmares, although the one and only night it came up, she looked like she wanted to. Natasha had drawn a very firm line, refusing to sleep overnight in the same bed. Too dangerous. With her reflexes - not to mention Maria’s reflexes, they were liable to kill each other before either of them was fully awake.

Natasha scrolled through her mental checklist: she had already run away from Maria, temporarily lost Maria (although that was Pepper’s fault), and let her eat way too much sugar at pretty much every meal. Why not add a bit of hypocrisy and lying to the list?

“I have nightmares a lot.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. And, when I talk about them, with my friends, it makes them seem not so scary.”

“Like with Tony?”

Natasha was  _ absolutely  _ going to kill him.

“Mmhm.” she smiled through clenched teeth.

Little Maria huffed a tiny sigh and stared at her hot chocolate. Natasha waited her out for awhile, and then gently prodded, “What happens in your nightmares?”

“I just get in trouble. All the time.”

“Why do you get in trouble?”

“I’m loud. And I talk but I am not ‘upposed to. I go too slow sometimes. I asked for a dog. I dropped a bowl.”

Natasha reached out and set her hand near Maria’s on the counter. Maria stared at it.

“What happens when you get in trouble?” Natasha prodded.

Maria let go of the mug of hot chocolate and picked up Natasha’s hand in both of hers, fidgeting with Natasha’s fingers.

“Maria? You can tell me. You’re safe here. Nobody will hurt you.”

The silence drug on.

“Does somebody hurt you when you’re in trouble?”

Maria nodded without looking up.

“Your dad?”

Another nod, tiny fingers holding tighter to her hand.

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore. You don’t have to see your dad again, and nobody here will hurt you when you’re in trouble. Also, we need to redefine trouble, but for now, Maria, listen to me, you don’t have to go back to your dad.”

Maria looked up, meeting Natasha’s eyes. Natasha wondered what was going on in her head. None of them had mentioned or asked about her dad before. Natasha wondered if Little Maria found that strange. Presumably no stranger than anything else that had happened since she woke up as a five year old. Natasha belatedly realized she might have opened a can of worms. What if Maria wanted to know where she was and where her dad was? What if she  _ wanted  _ to go back? They’d have to come up with some way to trick her. Maybe they could tell her that her dad was on a business trip and he’d be back in a few days. Or weeks. Or months.

“Okay.”

The tiny voice startled Natasha. Little Maria had apparently accepted Natasha's statement, but instead of dwelling like Natasha expected, she had moved on. She let go of Natasha’s hand and reached for the mug of hot chocolate, pulled it close to her and took a noisy slurp.

 

“ _ DONUUUUUUUTS _ !” Little Maria pitched herself dramatically off her chair at the breakfast bar, and once again Natasha’s heart was in her throat as she was barely quick enough to catch the limp body and return her to her chair.

“What is your major malfunction, Pipsqueak?” Tony gawked at her from across the counter.

“She’s tired. She’s been up since 4:30.” Natasha replied, not taking her eyes off of Maria, in case there was a secondary launch incident.

“I get up at 4:30 all the time, you don’t see me whining about donuts.”

“Nope, just about every other thing.”

“Hey, I don’t whine, I realistically point out flaws in the situations and people around me.”

“You’re right, actually. ‘Whine’ is not nearly a strong enough verb to describe the sh- stuff that comes out of your mouth.”

“Just. Donuts.” Maria muttered, and let her forehead drop to the counter-top with a loud  _ thud _ that made both Natasha and Tony wince.

“Pipsqueak, Bruce will come up at lunch time and make you donuts.”

“Don’t tell her that!” Natasha hissed, as Maria sat up, rubbing at her forehead and staring suspiciously at Tony.

“He said-”

“He was joking. The donuts aren’t really magical. He can make them at lunch.” Natasha gave in. What was another few hours of sugar-amped hysteria and whiplash mood swings?

Maria smiled happily at the results of the negotiation and went back to playing with her scrambled eggs, occasionally deciding to put some in her mouth.

Tony studied her for a moment, and then snapped his fingers. He grabbed a tablet sitting off to the side of the counter. “JARVIS, could you load some some classic Bugs Bunny on here?”

“Indeed, sir. Bugs Bunny is an age appropriate program for Miss Hill, although it may contain token violence and cultural references that are now considered non-politically corre-”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, just roll ‘em. And how about some headphones?”

A panel in the wall that Natasha never knew existed slid open and revealed a child-size pair of padded earphones.

“Where does this stuff  _ come from _ ?”

Tony ignored Natasha and pushed the tablet in front of Maria’s face. “Pipsqueak, I’m going to put these on your ears and you’re not going to scream at me, right?”

Maria was already watching Bugs Bunny cavort across the tablet. Tony gently settled the earphones onto her head, and as the sound kicked in, she sucked in a little breath of excitement and leaned over the tablet, no longer aware of the world around her.

Tony nodded, satisfied with himself, and looked at Natasha expectantly.

“What? She’s watching American cartoons. Do you want an award or something?”

“It’s true, little ears do make good pitchers.”

“What?”

“Or something. That’s not the point. Well it is the point. She overhears stuff. She’s smart, I think she’s doing it on purpose.”

“Doing what on purpose?”

“Pretending not to listen, but then listening, and using what she learns against us.”

“I think she’s smart, but I think you might be giving her a  _ little _ too much credit.”

“Suit yourself. If she retains any of these memories, you are going to be in big trouble.”

Natasha was too distracted to snark back. “You think she’ll retain these memories?”

Tony looked at the Black Widow sitting at his breakfast counter, worriedly eyeing a child who was engrossed in cartoons. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. We’re mostly concerned about reversal of- well, you’re not interested-”

“Actually,” Natasha’s eyes swung to Tony and her voice sharpened, “I am intensely interested in what you and Bruce, or apparently just Bruce, are concerned about and working towards as regards this absolute  _ clusterfuck _ -”

“Hey, language.”

“She can’t hear us, you moron.”

“Right, well use whatever fucking language you want to, I guess, but it’s a bit lazy, there’s so much you can do with language, why resort to such pedestrian epithets when you can-”

“Tony, I am not in the mood for this. Please stop. Her ears might be covered, but her eyes aren’t so I can’t disembowel you in your own kitchen-”

“Also because that would be unsanitary.”

“But I could strangle you, from behind, and make it look like a nice hug, so stop now.”

“Was that meant to sound sexual?”

“Tony!”

“Fine. Fine. Hands up. I surrender.” Tony waved his hands in the air.

Peace temporarily established, the two Avengers stared at each other across the counter, neither sure what to say next. Arguing was their default mode of conversation. Take it off the table and you got this uncomfortable silence.

Tony cleared his throat, “Um, why was she up at 4:30?” He was careful to pitch his voice in question, not accusation.

“Nightmares.” Natasha responded shortly.

Tony nodded thoughtfully, then, mumbling to himself, turned and snatched a second tablet off the counter behind him

Seriously, thought Natasha, where did all this tech come from? It seemed to sprout organically from random surfaces.

Tony tapped at the screen and then studied Natasha cautiously.

“Spill it, Stark.”

“You can’t get mad. Well, you will get mad, but you can’t get like, berserk mad, and you can’t run off, and you can’t kill me.”

“What could you possibly have on that tablet? Tony, does JARVIS monitor my quarters? I thought we had an  _ agreement _ -”

“Whoa, down girl, nice horsie, take it easy, you’re way off track. This is… well it’s not even remotely that. Just, try to stay calm.” And with that Tony spun the tablet around and set it in front of Natasha.

It took her a moment to skim the words on the page and then she realized what she was looking at.

“Tony, I already read all of her records.”

Tony looked gobsmacked, “Wait, what? Seriously, and you still ran away? Man, I thought I was the immature one-”

“You are the immature one, even with her in the room.” Natasha glared at Tony. “Of course I read those. Why were you reading them?”

Tony rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, searching for the right words. “The other night when you- you asked!”

Tony backed up at the fury on Natasha’s face. She didn’t drop her scowl, but waved at him to continue.

“The other night after you  _ had to leave for work or something _ , Pipsqueak over there went full-on nuclear hysteria. She wouldn’t leave the kitchen in case you came back, and she started covering her ears every time Bruce or I would try to talk. I went to hand her a glass of water and she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. She fell off that damn chair just to not be near me. And after the first day, when she was so scared of all of us, I thought it was just because she didn’t know where she was, but clearly there are deeper issues.”

“She’s not afraid of  _ you _ , Tony. She’s just… careful. It’s safer to be a little afraid of everyone.”

“Sounds like you speak from experience.”

“Don’t dig.”

Tony nodded, accepting the warning.

“I read it all,” Natasha said, “and I got mad, and then I realized there wasn’t anything I could do with that anger.”

“Good riddance.” Tony muttered darkly.

“Do you speak from experience?” Natasha asked, suddenly picking up on a subtle undercurrent.

Tony shook his head uncomfortably. “Not like that. My dad was… hard on me, but not like that. Mostly he just wasn’t there.”

“That can be hard, too.”

Tony studied his hands thoughtfully, then looked up at Natasha, “So, are you two really dating?”

“Stark, what the fuck goes on in your brain?”

“It’s a mystery to mere mortals. Pepper keeps calling her your girlfriend, and I thought she was teasing you, but, like, who would take that risk, and then she just kept saying it, so I thought...”

Natasha rolled her eyes, “You really are the dumbest genius.”

“Hey! You should be thanking me for staying out of your business! Aren’t you always saying that? ‘Stark, stay out of my business.’ And five minutes ago you accused me of having JARVIS spy on you!” Tony paused. “If JARVIS was spying on you, what would he see?”

“Me, murdering you.”

“Okay, I can take a hint.”

“That would be a first.”

“Are you really going to let Pipsqueak have donuts for lunch? Her sugar high packs a punch.”

“Why do you care about her sugar high? You’ll be in the lab - at least you better be.”

“Yeah, I’m going down there in a little bit. I got Banner-banned for a minute. He said I was talking too much, preventing him from concentrating or something.”

“Hey, why do you call her Pipsqueak all the time?”

“I don’t know. It’s a nickname. It’s adorable. Like that time I called you Natty, but instead of finding it adorable, like a normal person, you let that I-beam fall on me.”

Natasha waved a dismissive hand, “You were in the suit, you were fine.”

“It’s weird.” Tony pointed at Little Maria, still engrossed in cartoons. “That’s not Maria. That’s a pipsqueak. Maria is annoying, and terrifying and always looks like she’s minutes away from successfully mastering telepathy and turning me into a gibbering idiot. But that little thing, she’s cute and all kinds of curious and has a grasp of tactics way beyond her age group, and when she’s not running away from me, she’s actually nice to me!”

Natasha laughed at the bewildered look on Tony’s face, “Maria annoys you because she’ll actually argue with you, and she’ll win. And she terrifies you because you know that if she ever gets tired of arguing, she’s more than capable of dropping something heavier than an I-beam on you.”

“I notice you haven’t addressed my point about telepathy. Why? Is she really about to figure it out?” 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the payoff, I promise. :) Just needed to lay the groundwork for a few good flashbacks if the mood ever strikes.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and for the kudos and comments. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
> 
> MCU not mine; mistakes mine.

“I’m going stir-crazy in this Tower, Pepper.” Natasha threw an arm over her face dramatically, falling onto the couch in Pepper’s office.

Little Maria, lying on the floor with the tablet, earphones still secure over her ears, looked up and scrunched her eyebrows at Natasha.

“You can’t leave her again. I can’t handle the emotions.”

“She can come with me.  _ She’s _ going stir-crazy in this Tower.”

“You are not leaving the Tower with her. It’s too risky. Also, she’s not stir-crazy, look at her!”

“Yeah, she’s been glued to that stupid tablet all morning. What’s so risky about leaving?”

“Are you prepared to answer questions about how the Black Widow acquired a child?”

“A temporary child.”

“That’s my point.”

There was a soft knock at the door, and Pepper pressed a button on her desk. “Come on in, Bruce.”

The door cracked open and Bruce stuck his head in, smiling shyly. Pepper waved him forward. He stepped fully into the room, keeping one hand behind his back.

“What do you have there?”

At Pepper’s words, Natasha pulled her arm off her face and looked over.

“Um… Tony told me that Maria wanted donuts again.”

“Oh no, you don’t-” Natasha started, but Bruce held up a hand.

“I know, I know, but I made a healthy batch.”

“Healthy donuts?” Pepper questioned from the desk. Natasha got up off the couch to investigate. Bruce produced a plate from behind his back, stacked high with donuts and covered in cling-film.

“Yeah, I put some hemp flour in there for fiber, and pea protein, and I used a fortified ghee-”

“So they’re not actually edible?” Natasha interrupted, studying the donuts suspiciously.

“What, no! Of course they’re edible!”

“Do they still have sugar in them?”

“Um, yeah, well, honey and agave nectar. And… I still rolled them in powdered sugar.”

“The sugar is the  _ problem _ .” Natasha rolled her eyes, then flinched in surprise as a small hand slid into hers. Maria had quietly left the tablet and earphones behind, and now stood next to Natasha, beaming up at Bruce and the plate of donuts.

“Can she… try one?”

“Like I could stop her now.”

Bruce pulled back the plastic wrap and Maria reached up and grabbed a donut, still smiling at him as she took a bite. It took two or three chews, but the smile dropped off her face and her eyebrows furrowed. Natasha looked between her and Bruce, suddenly fighting off a smile of her own. Bruce watched Little Maria apprehensively. Her jaw slowed, and her lips pouted ominously. She looked behind Bruce, and then around the larger room.

Natasha groaned in exasperation, and produced her unoccupied right hand in front of Maria’s face. Maria shot her a grateful look, and then leaned forward and spit the half-chewed healthy donut into her hand.

“That’s gross.” Bruce whispered.

“Yeah, I think that’s the overall consensus.” Natasha nodded.

Maria very apologetically returned the rest of the donut back to the plate, and then dropped Natasha’s hand and scampered off.

Bruce stared at Natasha for an uncomfortably long moment.

“What?”

“Um, nothing. I just- you…” Bruce vaguely waved his hand up and down, “You kinda look… I remember my mom once-”

“Yep, that’s enough. Go away.”

A strange sound caught them both short. Natasha looked over her shoulder to see Little Maria dragging a wastebasket from behind Pepper’s desk, the bottom of it rumbling dully across the carpet. She drug it to Natasha’s side, smiling again.

“Here!”

“Thanks,” Natasha tossed the mushy mess into the wastebasket, and Maria, satisfied that all was well again, skipped back towards her tablet.

“Well, thanks for stopping by,” Natasha reached out and wiped the last of the spit and crumbs off her hand onto Bruce’s shoulder. “I’m sure you’re busy, so don’t let us keep you.”

 

Bruce had returned to the lab to help Tony, Pepper was engrossed in paperwork, and Little Maria seemed content to stay on the floor and watch cartoons.

Natasha’s muscles were twitching with the need to spar, run,  _ something _ , but she tamped down the urge and tossed herself back onto the couch. Maybe she could nap. Maybe she was actually sleeping and this was one long, strange nightmare. A frisson of panic had taken up residence in her head and the back of her neck. Tony and Bruce had stopped offering up the automatic assurances of how close they were to fixing this. Not that Natasha believed them in general when they said they were “onto something” - that type of claim was their version of pointless small talk. But the frenetic energy of “fix it now” had fully subsided and turned into the feel of a long-haul project, which was terrifying in it’s ambiguity. They had maybe a day or two left before things started spiraling out of control.

Pepper couldn’t hide Adult Maria’s absence for much longer. Meetings could only be rescheduled so many times, and the various governments and factions that Maria negotiated with on a weekly basis weren’t going to passively accept a stand-in without a very good explanation.

And as far as explanations went, the other Avengers were going to require one too. Steve was somewhere in Eastern Europe, off the radar, following a lead on Bucky; but he checked in every few weeks, keeping abreast of current events and receiving whatever intel might have been unearthed. He was going to find it very strange if Maria somehow wasn’t available; it might even lure him back to the States. It was almost funny: what would a twenty-something who was actually a 97 year old have to say to a five year old who was actually a thirty-something?

Clint was going to be another problem. He generally let Natasha lurk in silence when they weren’t on a mission or on duty, allowing her to choose when and how she wanted to engage. But he also had a preternatural sense of her moods, he never let her get too lost in herself without reaching out with a stupid joke or an invite to the farm, just to pull her back to reality. And worse, he had been mostly insufferable since learning of Natasha’s decision to try to flirt with Maria. She was pretty sure he thought that this was just another in a long line of games that Natasha had developed when boredom was pressing. She hadn’t yet figured out how to tell him that she wasn’t in this out of boredom.

Thor was the only one she didn’t really have to worry about. Not only were his appearances on Earth infrequent, but being an alien immortal God tended to offer one a very different perspective on things. What was a little de-aging compared to magic hammers and rainbow bridges?

In terms of sheer severity, the combined reactions of Steve and Clint and Thor had nothing on that of a one-eyed man currently in deep cover somewhere in South America. Tony and Bruce would be a lot more determined to fix this if they knew that Nick Fury was still alive. Maybe she should tell them. Maybe she should tell Nick. He'd probably have a few contacts that might be helpful. Of course, he might take great offense to his former right-hand (and his left-eye) being de-aged. Natasha didn't need another person to manage in this mess.

Natasha drew in a calming breath. Okay, there was nothing she could do about progress in the lab; the best she could do for Pepper was to leave the woman alone to try and buy time. For Maria… Natasha opened her eyes and barely caught herself before she yelped in surprise.

Little Maria was hanging off the back of the couch, her face inches from Natasha’s, studying her with those bright blue eyes.

How the hell had she gotten up there without Natasha noticing?

Natasha reached up and tugged on her arm, easily overbalancing her and sending the tiny girl tumbling onto Natasha. Maria giggled happily and rolled the rest of the way off Natasha and the couch - landing a solid elbow to Natasha’s solar plexus as she went.

“Oof.” Natasha sat up, looking around. Had she really fallen asleep?

“She climbed up there like fifteen minutes ago,” Pepper offered from her desk. “Just hung over you like a bat or something. Also, she found a cartoon I think she’d like to show you.”

Maria was standing in the middle of the room, holding the tablet, bouncing a little in excitement. Natasha smiled at her and waved her over.

“Can we do  _ this _ ?” Little Maria thrust the tablet into Natasha’s hands and tapped it. A cartoon un-paused. Natasha watched curiously as a skinny brown wolf-like creature put on a pair of roller skates with rockets attached to them. Momentarily, a bird streaked down the road, and the wolf creature struck a match and lit the skates. They ignited, and he careened down the road, gaining on the bird. Then the road turned sharply to the left; the wolf creature did not. He overshot the road itself, and then solid ground as he skidded off the edge of a cliff, hanging in midair for a moment before plummeting to the ground with an exaggerated whistle.

Natasha gaped at Pepper, “What the hell is Tony letting her watch?”

“That is Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. I put that on for her.”

“Let’s get rocket skates!” Maria shrieked.

Natasha narrowed her eyes at Pepper, “I’m beginning to think we’ve all unfairly painted Tony as the only instigator of stupid shit around here.”

Pepper shrugged, “You said you were getting stir-crazy.”

“And you think the answer is to strap a child into a pair of rocket skates?”

Pepper looked startled, “Oh, no! Of course not! I thought  _ you _ could put on the rocket skates.”

 

“We have got to stop using dinner as a therapy session.” Pepper muttered into her wine glass.

The three adults sat around the breakfast bar, the remains of another group dinner scattered across the table. They each slumped or leaned, exhaustion radiating off of them. Little Maria was out cold on the couch. It was the fourth day of group dinner, and fourth day that dinner had turned into an emotional wringer of one kind or another.

After Pepper had introduced her to the exploits of Wile E. Coyote, Natasha had taken Maria down to the Avengers gym, where JARVIS had kindly - or unkindly, if you asked Natasha - provided a variety of equipment straight from the ACME design shop, including a pair of honest to God rocket skates. Natasha had promptly jettisoned herself into the lap pool.

After abandoning the ACME gadgets, to Maria’s disappointment, Natasha had instituted an impromptu tumbling session, hoping to tire the little girl out. It worked so well that Maria nodded off twice during dinner, the second time nearly dropping her face into her plate. It might have worked too well; Natasha found herself in an uncomfortable state of exhaustion, and the resulting lack of control had lead her to start at least two of the arguments they’d had during dinner.

“I thought you said therapy was a good thing.” Tony said.

“When conducted by a trained and licensed therapist, yes.”

“You don’t think I’m qualified to talk about my problems?”

“You’re not qualified to tie your shoes.” Natasha had passed on the wine in favor of straight vodka.

“I’d take offense to that except the last pair of shoes JARVIS had delivered to me were slip on.”

“The problem is that it’s not just your problems.” Pepper said.

Bruce rolled a bottle of water between his hands, “The problem is that some of our problems aren’t dinner table problems.”

“Right, some of our problems are lab problems, and why are you two not in the lab?”

“There’s no point in going down there until Jane calls us back. We’re waiting on her results.”

“You could wait down there, away from us.”

“Hey, Natty, take it easy.”

“Call me that again and I’ll-”

“Oh, stop  _ threatening  _ everyone!” Bruce’s raised voice gave everyone pause, including himself. He cleared his throat and offered a mumbled apology.

“How about some ground rules?” Pepper suggested, pitching her voice brightly, “We all agree that Tony and Bruce are working as hard as they can to reverse this, so we don’t need to berate them about it. We also all agree that Natasha is the best person to be watching Maria, so we don’t need to be judgmental about that either. And let’s go ahead and say no more cartoons; Natasha, you smell like chlorine.”

“You know, you could have laid the ground rules three days ago.” Tony had lined up six bottles from his liquor cabinet, and was rolling holographic dice to decide which bottle and how many shots.

“You’re setting ground rules like you think this is going to last a while.” Natasha sounded miserably morose.

“No! No, not at all! I think- this can’t- well, we’re going to figure this out. New ground rule, we’re all going to stop reading so much into the ground rules.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Pep.”

Bruce’s phone chirped brightly. “Hey, Jane has something for us. Let’s go, Tony.”

“Aw, but I just rolled double sixes!”

“Natasha,” Pepper grabbed the shorter woman’s arm, “Take Maria upstairs. Go to bed.”

“But, they might be able to reverse it! We could go down there-”

“Natasha, no offense, but you look like you’re going to punch someone or cry, and I honestly believe that either of those things would throw Tony and Bruce so far off their game it will take days to recover. Those two idiots are no strangers to dosing up on caffeine and working through the night, so let them do that. You need sleep, and you need to try to let go of the what-ifs. It's driving you crazy. We’ll deal with tomorrow when it gets here.”

Natasha walked over to the couch and stared down at the tiny version of Maria Hill asleep on the couch. Her mouth hung open slightly, one hand was thrown up above her head, and one foot dangled off the side of the couch.

“Maria,” she shook the girl gently. Maria stirred, and looked up, blinking in confusion. Natasha didn’t speak, just held out her hands. Maria sat up and stuck her own arms out expectantly. Natasha scooped her up, and Maria immediately cuddled in, arms wrapped tightly around Natasha’s neck.

“We’ll deal with tomorrow when it gets here?” Natasha eyed Pepper seriously.

Pepper nodded, “Yes.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is short, but the conclusion is coming momentarily, and I really needed this particular line to be the last one in a chapter. :)
> 
> In case you were curious, yes, I hand-waved away normal science so hard that I managed to hand-wave away fake pseudo-science as well. I'm hoping none of you are here for the science...
> 
> I hope you enjoy! All mistakes are mine; the characters and settings are not. There is some language, but nothing worse that what we've already seen.

Natasha was awake when the door chime sounded softly at nearly four in the morning. She had fallen asleep on the couch for a few hours after returning to her room and depositing Little Maria on her bed. But she had woken up to the darkness and stillness, convinced that Maria was going to have a nightmare, and preparing herself for the emotional agony that would follow.

Instead of Maria, it was JARVIS, intoning that Pepper was at the door.

Natasha opened the door with a scowl on her face, “Do you know what time it is?”

Pepper rolled her eyes, “You weren’t sleeping.”

“I could have been. You apparently weren’t either.”

Pepper was in leggings and a tank top, a long cardigan over it. Her hair was pulled back in its typical neat low ponytail. She didn’t look ready for a press junket, but she certainly didn’t look like she had just rolled out of bed.

“They think they know how to fix it.”

Natasha stood frozen, staring mutely at Pepper. Her mind raced.

“Natasha?”

“I heard you.” And then all of the thoughts crashing through her head came spilling out of her mouth. “What do you mean, they  _ think? _ Either they know or they don’t. And how are they going to fix it? Are they going to return her to normal? To her real age? What about her memories? Will she be the same as she was four days ago? Will she think she’s missing time? How do they know they won’t accidentally wipe out all the stuff from when she was this age to when she’s her real age? They don’t have any idea what they’re doing, do they? How do they know this will work? Have they run tests or something - and how do they even test this? Did they steal someone off the street and reverse-age them and then put them back? Is this Jane’s solution or did they do it on their own? Do they have a way to reverse it, if it goes wrong I mean?”

“Reverse it?” Pepper interrupted, looking at Natasha like she was insane. “Natasha, we don’t want to  _ reverse _ anything, that’s our problem  _ now _ !”

“But what if they fuck it up?!”

Pepper recognized the panic in Natasha’s voice. She had never even known the Black Widow was capable of panic until she was asked to interact with her child-aged girlfriend, and then again when said girlfriend was temporarily lost. Anyone else might think that the assassin was merely annoyed, but Pepper had pinpointed that particular timbre of Natasha’s voice that meant pure anxiety.

“I know it doesn’t mean much if I say they won’t screw it up, but they won’t. They’ve been working on this for four days.”

“It’s taken them four days to come up with a fix, but you don’t think maybe they should take another four days to actually find out if it works? When was the last time either of them slept?”

“You’ve snarled at them at every single meal because they weren’t in the lab; now they’re in the lab and you’re mad that they’re not sleeping?”

“If they’re tired, they’ll make mistakes.”

“Okay, let’s say we do it your way. We make them both go take naps - which is ridiculous by the way. Tony will just drink and start working on something new, and Bruce might sleep but Tony will wake him up with whatever new idea he’s stumbled upon, and then they’ll both be off on some tangent that we have to beat them off of. Then what? You want to run tests? So now we have to find someone dumb enough-”

“Don’t call Maria dumb.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that. But we’ll have to find someone willing to be de-aged, and then re-aged, and who would agree to that when you won’t let us try it with Maria? So that’s another week, at least. More, actually, because now Tony and Bruce have got to figure out how to recreate the original accident. So, let’s assume that it only takes them two days to figure out what they did in the first place; presumably knowing how to fix it gives them a head start. Then let’s assume we lie to our test subject about what we’re doing, and pay them boatloads of cash, so it only takes us a day to draw up the legal paperwork for a test subject. Then let’s assume the test itself - both the de-aging and the re-aging - only take a day. Even with all of those assumptions, that’s another four days. In the first four days, you’ve freaked out about six times, ran away once, slept very little yourself, and you’ve also issued enough threats to make them absolutely meaningless, which is pretty funny. Maria is not dumb. She can tell something is wrong. Do you really want to drag this out for another four days?”

Natasha studied Pepper carefully. “You seem awfully committed to this.”

“You, shockingly, don’t.”

“No, there’s something else. You of all people know how dangerous Tony’s lab can be. It doesn’t make sense that you’re not demanding test runs. Even if Maria wasn’t your friend, you wouldn’t let Tony do something of this magnitude without… some kind of reassurances. What are you not telling me?”

There was a silent stare down. Pepper, bathed in light from the hallway, Natasha shrouded in the darkness of her apartment.

Natasha slowed her breathing. She’d waited out entire compounds full of people; one stubborn CEO was nothing.

Pepper apparently was not in the mood for a prolonged silent confrontation. “Fine. Fine. For the record, I don’t know how Maria puts up with you.”

Natasha smiled and shrugged.

“I am committed to making this happen tonight. I know there are risks. But… they did run a test. Kind of.”

“Explain.”

“They um…”

“Did they run the test on themselves? You can’t think that I’d not want to see that.”

“No, it wasn’t quite that. It was… smaller scale.”

Natasha breathed calmly into the pause.

“They tested it on a mouse.”

“Excuse me?”

“A white mouse.”

“Is the fact that it was white supposed to mean something to me?  _ Pepper. _ You do understand that there are a few fundamental differences between Maria and a mouse, right? Assuming the mouse did not blow up, I consider this completely irrelevant. It didn’t blow up, right?”

“No, of course not. It worked perfectly, as far as we can tell.”

“As far as you can tell… wait a minute, you said they didn’t know how to recreate the original de-aging!”

“They don’t. They aged the mouse forward.”

“I spent decades traveling the world as a brainwashed super assassin, and yet this is the strangest conversation I have ever had, by a long shot.”

“They’re worried that if they don’t fix it soon, they might not be able to.”

The blood drained from Natasha’s face so quickly that Pepper reached out to grab her arm, just in case.

“I thought they said it wouldn’t matter.”

“Jane sent them some of her research,” Pepper said helplessly, “I don’t understand the science, but they seem to think that there is very good reason to fix this as soon as possible.”

“I… okay, but…”

“Natasha,” Pepper steeled her spine, “with or without your approval, this needs to happen. Now. So either decide you’re going to fight me about it, or go get Maria.”

 

Natasha felt lightheaded. Little Maria slept soundly, cuddled in a blanket in her arms; Pepper fidgeted next to them in the elevator as it descended.

Natasha pressed her nose against the crown of Little Maria’s head and inhaled deeply. She felt sick; she felt a lot like she felt right after she had knocked out a possessed Clint above the Helicarrier engine room. Some invisible milestone had been reached, and there was only one path moving forward; there was no option but to follow it to the inevitable conclusion. Even if that conclusion was her worst nightmare. Turned out she had two worst nightmares now.

“Um, Pepper. If… if something happens…”

Pepper looked over expectantly, but Natasha didn’t know how to finish the request. If something went wrong, she was most likely going to run. She didn’t think she could stop herself. Didn’t think she could stay and live this life that she had constructed, with real people, with the Avengers, with Maria. She had started over once, with the assistance of SHIELD scientists and a very patient one-eyed man. She had neither of these things now. And worse, she had things in her life now that she didn’t want to escape from. She didn’t want a restart. She didn’t want to back up at all. She wanted to pick up where she left off four days ago, when Maria had winked at her before they both left the locker room to go about their day. She wanted to flirt with Maria when one of the other Avengers was in the room, so she could see that deer in the headlights look on her face. She wanted to plan date nights and then have them ruined when one of them had to deal with an emergency. She wanted to fill Maria’s office with dangerous plants again, because the first time had earned her the biggest smile she’d ever seen. And just for kicks, she wanted to fill Pepper’s office with plants too. She wanted to test the theory that Maria was hiding some serious cuddle monster tendencies. She wanted to pick a fight with Maria just so they could make up. She wanted to convince Maria to take a vacation. It would probably get interrupted by a war, but they could at least try. She wanted to get cold feet about their relationship - she knew she would, she was starting to five days ago - because now she knew that it would be worth it. She’d try to run, but Maria wouldn’t let her. She’d try to disappear, gradually, but Maria would see her and hold her still with her eyes alone. She wanted to propose ridiculous things, because Maria had always humored her, and the more outrageous things Natasha could bring up, the more Maria would be caught off guard when Natasha started proposing normal things. Like, maybe, living together.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

 

Tony closed the door to the Laser Enclosure with a thumbs up to Pepper. He had been strangely quiet and civil and non-sarcastic. Pepper figured it had something to do with the shorter woman now leaning against the wall, holding her hands over her face. Natasha was visibly on edge. She’d hardly said a word since they entered the lab, but her eyes flashed in a dangerous way, and Tony had been smart enough not to test the boundaries.

Tony and Bruce had instructed Natasha to put Little Maria down in roughly the same spot she’d been when Pepper came down days ago.

Natasha had eased Little Maria to the floor as if she were an armed nuclear weapon and crouched there for several minutes. Bruce had cleared his throat carefully and without a word, Natasha had stood up and walked out of the room, Pepper following.

The door wasn’t soundproof; Pepper could hear the low murmur of Tony and Bruce talking. She glanced over at Natasha, who hadn’t moved.

Pepper gritted her teeth and put a hand on Natasha’s shoulder, fully prepared to have the woman bat it away. Or maybe rip it off. Natasha didn’t respond at all.

One minute drug out. Then a second. Then a third. Pepper fought the need to fidget.

Minute six came and went. And then there was a humming noise that cut out almost as soon as it had started.

Natasha was so still under Pepper’s hand that Pepper wasn’t sure she was breathing. Pepper was barely breathing.

 

  
“STARK! BANNER! WHAT THE  _ FUCK _ IS GOING ON HERE!”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhh man, I have so many more scenes in my head now that I've got them together. :) But those will have to be new stories if I get around to writing them. This chapter officially wraps up the ridiculous plot-bunny that I thought was going to be three or four chapters of of general cuteness and instead turned into... this.
> 
> But I really enjoyed writing it, and even more so, I really enjoyed hearing everyone's reaction to it! Thanks for sticking with me, even after I stopped updating regularly. I am incredibly appreciative of all of your comments.
> 
> One last time, the characters aren't mine, but all mistakes are. Thanks for reading!

“I really can’t believe you didn’t at least maim them.”

“Pepper said I made so many threats that I didn’t follow through on that I lost credibility.”

“Mmm. I could follow through on some of them for you.”

“You’re invested in my credibility?”

“Very.”

“It’s not at all related to you wanting to maim them yourself?”

“Not in the least.”

Early morning sun spilled across the room and into Natasha’s small kitchen, where she and Maria sat across the breakfast bar from each other, nursing coffee while Natasha tried to catch Maria up.

Despite immediately identifying that something had happened - which wasn’t a stretch since she woke up in the lab, wrapped in a blanket and nothing else, with Tony and Bruce both looking like they were about to turn and run - Maria had been fairly disoriented. Her memories from two or three days leading up to the de-aging were intact, but badly scrambled, and so far her memories from her time as a five year old were sketchy images and emotions at best.

“We can’t ever go to the Hamptons again.”

“I’ve never even been to the Hamptons.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Did you  _ leave _ me there?”

“No! Why, what do you remember?”

Maria shook her head, “I’m not really sure. I don’t really remember the beach, I just… feel like I remember the beach. And I was lost.”

“Maybe a little bit lost.”

“You took me to the beach and lost me?”

“Pepper’s fault. She brought you when she came to find me.”

“When you ran away.”

“I don’t know why everyone insists on saying it like that. ‘Ran away’ like it’s a new movie coming out. I’m pretty sure I’ve proven my willingness to leave, it’s not like it’s a surprise.”

Maria shook her head. “You think that, but all you’ve really proven over the last decade or so is that you never run away when people really need you. Ask Clint.”

Natasha scowled and door an obnoxiously loud slurp of coffee. Maria rolled her eyes and reached down with her free hand to rub Liho’s head. “Ask Liho.”

The tiny cat had watched with interested when Maria and Natasha came in. Natasha had sent Maria to find clothes while she started the coffee. As soon as Maria had sat down at the counter, Liho had jumped up into her lap, curling into a content, purring puffball. Natasha had watched, astonished, and then had pouted for ten minutes that her cat was cuddling with her girlfriend.

“So why can’t we go back?”

“Well, you could go back. I can’t go back because Bimbo Barbie Ponytail might see me and turn me in for child endangerment.”

“I definitely don’t remember a Bimbo Barbie Ponytail.”

“She found you- or you most likely found her. Not sure she bought the story of why Pepper and I were at the beach with a five year old at seven in the morning.”

“What was the story?”

“There wasn’t one. Hey you never apologized for spitting in my soup in the first place.”

“Eh, I feel no need to apologize for something I did when I was five.”

“Bruce tried to make you eat healthy donuts.”

Maria made a face and Natasha straightened up excitedly.

“Do you remember that?”

Maria shook her head slowly, “I don’t think so. Maybe? I just remember some nasty thing that tasted like sugar and dirt. Mostly dirt.”

“You spit that out too, actually.”   
“Are we really not going to talk about the fact that you tried to run away?”

“No, I’m gonna keep it focused on you for now.”

“Alright. Is there a reason my forehead should hurt?”

Natasha snorted into her coffee mug, “Yeah, you little drama queen, you dropped your head on the table when you didn’t get something you wanted.”

“Huh. I’ve often felt like doing that at work, but I’ve never actually  _ done  _ it.”

“Well, now you have. You also tried to jump off a couch and a chair. I’m thinking of confining you to the bottom two floors of Stark Tower.”

“Well nothing else hurts, so I assume you caught me.”

"Every time.” The words came out softer than Natasha intended, and Maria didn’t reply. A silence fell over the kitchen that could have been uncomfortable but ended up being easy and soothing.

“You smiled a lot more when you were five.” Natasha eyed Maria over the rim of her coffee cup.

Maria started to say something, then thought better of it, then pink started to tinge her cheeks. Natasha grinned widely, both at the blush and at the realization that Maria was starting to squirm under her gaze. Natasha held the stare, and willed Maria to look at her. It worked. Maria glanced up and caught sight of Natasha’s smile. Natasha stuck her tongue out between her teeth. Maria’s lips started to curl. Natasha leaned forward and set her mug on the table, almost laughing at the effort she was putting into the smile. Maria fought it, but she was a goner. A smile chased the blush across her face and she ducked her head behind her own coffee mug.

“Nuh-uh,” Natasha reached out and pushed the coffee mug to the side, “I worked for it. I won it fair and square.”

Maria lifted her head and revealed the full blown smile, almost-dimples and all. “Is this what you were after?” The smile threatened to turn into a smirk.

“Yes. Think maybe I could get one every now and then without asking for it?”

The smile faltered in surprise, “Am I missing something? Is this a new inside joke?”

“No,” Natasha shook her head, “I just really like seeing you smile. And in our line of work… sometimes there’s not a reason. For days. And… and I want to see it everyday. At least once. I think I can ask for that, right?” By the time Natasha finished, she was staring into her coffee. It was the first time she’d outright asked for anything since they’d started dating. Maria’s response pulled her eyes back up.

“Yeah Nat. You can ask for that.” Maria’s smile was softer now, but no less brilliant.

“Oh God,” Natasha whispered, “Pepper was right. This is a thing now. We’re a thing.”

“Pepper is usually right.”

“Yeah. She was instrumental in keeping you alive for the first twenty-four hours while the rest of us spazzed out, so maybe don’t be mad at her when you find out she told me all your secrets.”

“Wait, what?”

 

“I hear you’ve been busy selling me out.”

Pepper spun in her chair to face the door. “Maria! Selling you out?”

“Nat says she knows secrets now. Mind telling me  _ which _ secrets?”

“Oh, you know, the ones about you being head-over-heels for her.”

“Oh, so all of them.” Maria sat down in one of the chairs in front of Pepper’s desk.

“I’d say I’m sorry, except I’m not. Someone’s gotta help the two of you out. At this pace you’ll be eighty before you start introducing her as your girlfriend. Also, I can make it up to you. I have footage of Natasha falling into the pool in the Training Gym.”

“Natasha’s never fallen into anything in her life.”

“Except you maybe,” Pepper waggled her eyebrows.

Maria groaned and covered her face with her hand.

“You were watching cartoons yesterday, Coyote and Roadrunner, and you convinced Natasha to put on rocket skates. Believe me, she  _ fell _ into that pool and it was not on purpose.”

Maria chucked, but gave an uncomfortable shrug, “You should erase it. Nat and I have been talking. We know JARVIS probably has a lot of footage from the last few days but… we don’t want to see it. I think Nat was thrown pretty hard by this whole thing. I want to let her move on.”

“She told you that?”

Maria shook her head, “No. But…”

“You can tell me,” Pepper leaned forward conspiratorially, “I told her your secrets, you can tell me hers.”

“You might think her threats are meaningless now, but I still put stock in them, so that’s not going to happen. I just read her better now than I used to. I get the impression that this was really difficult for her.”

“It wasn’t easy for any of us, you know. I mean, you were a cute kid and all, but-” Pepper caught herself before she finished the sentence. She had no idea if Maria and Natasha had already talked about Maria’s  _ real _ childhood, and they both deserved the chance to be the first one each other talked to.

“But?” Maria pinned Pepper with one of those steely-eyed looks that Pepper had seen her level at Board Members, and Senators, and Generals and sometimes at the Avengers. It was a look that said, without equivocation, ‘I can read your mind and don’t like what I’m reading, but I’ll let you talk yourself into your own noose instead of expending my energy.’

Pepper redirected to safer territory, “You made an absolute mess in the Avengers’ common room, and I think you made Bruce cry when you wouldn’t eat his healthy donuts.”

Maria made another face, “God, those donuts.”

“I’m a little surprised to see you. I figured you and Natasha would take the day.”

“I told her to get some sleep. She needs to work out some of the anxiety, but I don’t spar with sleepy Nat. She forgets to pull her punches.”

Pepper grinned, “You two are adorable.”

“If by adorable you mean deadly, then yes.”

“Oh get over yourself. Natasha stalked around here for four days threatening anyone who even  _ looked _ at you wrong. And rather than scold you when you displayed your lack of table manners she literally ran away.”

“You need to stop teasing her about that.”

“Or what?” Pepper laughed.

Maria’s eyes narrowed, but there was a glint of humor still, “Nat may have lost credibility when it comes to making threats, but I haven’t yet made a threat I wasn’t willing to make good on.”

“ _ Nat _ uses threats like a big blanket when she’s scared. She and I had a very long talk on the beach. I think I’m safe.”

“Is this the same talk during which you revealed all of my secrets?”

“Only because she needed to hear them.”

“Stop talking like… like…”

“Like a person?”

“Like a damn fortune teller. You can say it in plain English.”

“She didn’t think you liked her as much as she liked you. Well, actually, first she didn’t realize how much she liked you. But once that dime dropped, then she didn’t really know how to tell you that she  _ liked you _ liked you, which admittedly was complicated at the time since you were five. And if casual flirting earned you an office full of carnivorous houseplants, I shudder to think where you two go from there without some guidance. I had to tell her some of your secrets, because you didn’t realize they were secrets, because while Natasha was busy thinking you didn’t like her as much as she liked you, you were thinking that she didn’t like you as much as you liked her.”

Pepper stopped her rant and looked at Maria expectantly.

“Pepper, that wasn’t English, that was Teenager. And don’t tease her about the plants either - I liked those.”

“You don’t keep plants in your office. Or your house.”

“I do if they’re from Nat.”

“Half of those plants were  _ poisonous _ .”

“Far less than half. Ten percent.”

“You know what, I need to get some work done - work that has backed up over the last few days, oddly enough.”

“I can help.”

“Nope, you’re not back at work for at least a day. Go find Tony and apologize for kicking him in the shin.”

“I will not! He deserved it.”

“Well of course he deserved it, but if you don’t talk to him he’ll pout, and then you’ll gloat, and then Natasha will have something to say about it, and then he’ll go mope around in the lab and we all know what happens when he spends too much unfocused time down there.”

Maria nodded in resignation, “I might end up kicking him in the shin again.”

“That’s still better than some of Natasha’s threats.”

“We should take a girls trip out to the Hamptons.”

“Get out of my office.”

 

Bruce was sitting at the counter in the Avengers’ kitchen when Maria stepped off the elevator. He looked up at the sound of the elevator doors and nearly fell off his stool in his haste to stand up.

“H-hi. Hi. Hey, hi Maria. Hey.”

“Are you having a stroke?”

“Huh?”

“You just said ‘hi’ about five times.”

“Uhhhh… right. Hello. Sorry. I guess, hello… it’s better… than hi.”

Maria smiled wickedly at him, “Bruce, are you afraid I’m here to kick your ass?”

“Y-yes.”

“Are you afraid of me in general?”

“I… am now.”

“Who are you more afraid of, me or Natasha?”

“That’s a really unfair question.” Bruce wiped sweat off the side of his face.

“You know, you have a big green rage monster who pretty much won’t let you get your ass kicked.”

“Yeah, but he’s really hard on sky-rises. And buildings in general.”

“Can I join you?”

“Huh-uh, what?”

Maria pointed to the mug and the tablet on the table in front of him.

“Coffee, tea… I don’t know, maybe that’s whisky. I could use a drink.”

“Um, yeah, you can… of course you can. I can leave? If you want to be alone?”

Maria shook her head at the flustered scientist, “You were here first. I wasn’t looking for solitude; I was actually looking for Tony, but I think I’d rather have some coffee.”

“Are you going to kick his ass?”

“Oh, definitely.”

Bruce sat back down, watching Maria carefully as she retrieved a mug from the cupboard and poured coffee. She wandered around to the other side of the counter, across from Bruce.

Bruce looked down at his tablet, then back at Maria. She seemed perfectly comfortable just staring at him, not talking. Was he supposed to start the conversation? Or maybe he was supposed to go back to reading. Was that rude? He should talk, right?

“Uh… Sorry. Again.”

“For the never ending greeting?”

“No. For the… kid thing.”

Maria raised a single eyebrow, “You might want to think of a better way to refer to it-”

“Hey, Banner, did you see this one reading from the second portal-  _ whoa _ !” Tony had walked around the corner, a tablet nearly glued to his face, not realizing until he was standing next to her that Maria was in the room. He backtracked hurriedly to Bruce’s side of the counter.

“Hey, geez, warn a guy, yeah? I was totally within arm’s length. She could have killed me, very dead, right there, she’d barely have to reach. God, maybe she did and I just didn’t notice. Am I bleeding? Check the back - blood? No? You can hear me, right, which means that my airway isn’t compromised, JARVIS, how’s my heart looking?”

“I was about to forgive Bruce for his part in this little adventure, but now I think I won’t.”

“Tony!” Bruce whined, pouting.

“Oh, you’re already on to forgiveness? I had that pegged at two weeks.”

“Just for him.”

“Hey, we were equal partners in crime. He’s just as much to blame as I am.”

“I can’t imagine that you would expect me to believe that.”

“He tried to feed you healthy donuts.”

“Okay, they were not  _ that bad _ .”

“Yes, they were.” Tony and Maria spoke at the same time.

“Okay, fine, I get it. No more healthy donuts. No more healthy anything! Sue me for trying to get you to eat your vegetables.”

“I haven’t eaten a vegetable in years.” Tony proclaimed proudly.

“Except for the carrot you ate the other night to prove to Maria that it was yummy for her tummy.”

An awkward silence followed Bruce’s comment, Maria studying the mug in her hand, Tony scanning the ceiling as if there were something of interest up there.

“Ah. yeah. See, this is why I don’t do conversations.” Bruce stood up and grabbed his tablet and mug. “I’m gonna go read somewhere quiet. Maria, thanks for not killing me.”

“I make no promises beyond today.”

“Yeah, well…” Bruce mumbled under his breath as he left the kitchen. Tony fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment as he watched Bruce leave the room.

“Sooooo… you’re an adult again.”

“Yeah.” Maria replied flatly, looking unimpressed.

“And how’s that going for you?”

“About how it was going before you shrank me.”

“De-aged. I know how to properly shrink things, and this was not that.” Tony wandered over to a nearby cabinet and pulled out a liquor bottle. “You want some? Scotch. Very old.”

“It’s not even noon.”

“It is in Scotland.” Tony poured a healthy measure into a glass tumbler and held it up in question.

Maria stared at him suspiciously, but nodded. He set the glass down and slid it across the counter to her.

She sniffed it, “how old?”

“Uh, lots?”

“That’s not a number.”

“Yeah, the label wore off of this a while ago. It was my dad’s. Or maybe the label was there until Loki almost destroyed my tower, I can’t remember. I break it out every time I’ve narrowly escaped death.”

“You haven’t escaped it yet.”

“Ah, but you accepted the drink, and one does not drink with someone that one is about to murder.”

“I’m pretty sure Nat has done that on a number of occasions.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. Look, I can only win over one of you at a time. Cheers.”

Maria held up her glass and allowed Tony to clink his against it. She took a sip. It was a  _ very  _ good scotch.

“You think a glass of good scotch is going to win me over?”

“I was planning to grovel at some point, but yeah, I thought this would be a good start. And if I’m really lucky, you’ll just get drunk and forget to yell at me. Where is Itsy Bitsy, anyway? I figured you two would be attached at the hip.”

“She’s sleeping. You better not let her catch you calling her that.”

“I already have. She was fine with it.”

“Was there by any chance a child in the room?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, there was.”

“She wasn’t fine with it.”

Tony threw his hands up in faux exasperation, but Maria sensed an element of actual frustration from him, “I can’t win with her. Or you. What do you want from me?”

“For you to stop doing stupid things.”

“Well that’s clearly unreasonable. Gimme something easier to start with.”

“How about an apology?”

“Really?” Tony cocked an eyebrow, “You don’t strike me as someone who can’t move on without an apology.”

Maria shrugged, “I’m not. But you don’t like to apologize, and making you do something you don’t like is always a good time for me.”

Tony frowned at the counter, started to speak, then cut himself off. He tapped his fingers irritably on the counter and then looked up at Maria. “Fine. You want an apology? I’m sorry. I’m sorry for turning you into a child. I’m sorry that it took us four days to reverse it. I’m sorry I told JARVIS to use every avenue available to make sure we had clothes and shoes that fit you and  _ jammies _ and a little two-inch toothbrush. I’m sorry that you were terrified of me and Bruce, even though that wasn’t our fault, and I’m sorry you thought I was going to hit you every time I raised my hand. I’m sorry we couldn’t manage to put together a single normal meal, although you must have learned table manners late in life because even I don’t spit food out. I’m sorry that Bruce made really good donuts and then Natasha yelled at him so I made JARVIS find him a recipe for healthy ones and they were like eating congealed kitty litter. I’m sorry Pepper had to do your job for four days while you were coloring and playing capture the flag with me and Natasha. I’m sorry I subjected the two of you to the horror of playing with paper airplanes and Nerf guns and  _ glitter _ . So much glitter. I’m sorry Pepper ended up having to babysit four kids at once because our collective age this past week has never cracked twenty. I’m sorry that Pepper had to track down Natasha when she  _ ran away _ because we weren’t sure if she just needed space or if she was going to disappear like she did after SHIELD fell. I’m sorry that Natasha ran away at all, except that was all on her, and I’m sorry you had a meltdown when she left and hyperventilated so badly I thought you were going to pass out. I’m sorry I didn’t know why this was such a big deal to her because I didn’t know you were dating because neither of you bothered to tell me. Not that you were hiding it very well, but even Pepper knew and nobody said anything. I’m sorry that your girlfriend is an emotionally unavailable-”

“ _ Stop. _ ” Maria bolted off her chair and physically held her hand out in front of Tony’s face, anger and astonishment on her face.

Tony stopped abruptly, looking just as astonished.

They stood in suspended animation for a long moment, Tony breathing heavily after his tirade.

Maria lowered her hand and made a concerted effort to wipe the emotion off of her face. “If you have something to say to Nat, you should say it to _her_ , because despite what you think you saw or heard or learned over the last few days, you don’t know anything about our relationship, and if you talk about her like that again, I really will make you regret it.”

Tony looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, but Maria narrowed her eyes and set her teeth and he finally took a tiny step backwards and nodded.

The tense silence hung until Maria took a swig from her glass.

“I am sorry.” Tony mumbled, downing his scotch and grabbing the bottle to pour more.

Maria sighed, “So am I.”

“What for?” Tony looked confused.

“Well, for that…” Maria waved at the common room, still strewn with upended furniture and Nerf darts and glitter. “And for Nat threatening you constantly. And apparently for kicking you in the shin.”

Tony winced and reached down to rub his shin, “That bruised you know. You remember that?”

“No, not really. I think though… did you let me wear the Iron Man boots?”

Tony smiled broadly. “We tried, but they were too big for you. I did let you wear one of the gauntlets.”

“Oh, that sounds safe.”

“Yeah, see that black mark on the wall over there? That was you.”

“Huh. Is that was I was aiming for?”

“Not even close.”

“Well that’s embarrassing.”

“For your first time shooting a repulsor glove bigger than your head? Wasn’t bad.”

There was a companionable silence as they both sipped their drinks.

“You know, I’m working on a new gyroscoping mechanism in the boots. If you ever wanted to come down to the lab and check it out.”

“I’m not stepping foot in that lab ever again.”

“I could bring the prototypes up here.” Tony’s voice was uncharacteristically sincere and Mara decided to take the olive branch he was offering.

“Throw in some more of this scotch and you have a deal.”

“This stuff is almost gone.”

“I’ll find you a new bottle of ‘barely survived’ scotch.”

“Ah, speaking of survival… maybe you could not tell Natasha what I said.”

“I’m not going to keep secrets from her, Tony.”

“You mean you’re not going to keep secrets from her  _ anymore _ ,” he replied pointedly.

Maria watched him carefully over the rim of her glass, the two of them reaching an unspoken agreement. “Right. No more secrets.”

“You could almost say I helped you two out. This little adventure… brought you closer, made you realize what you mean to each other-”

“Oh my God, Stark, your delusions are truly unmatched among men and immortals.”

Tony held up his glass and smiled in toothy salute.

 

Maria spun unexpectedly and used her momentum to twist Natasha backwards. Natasha couldn’t adjust her balance in time, and ended up flat on her back. Maria tangled her legs with Natasha’s, and barred her arm across Natasha’s throat. She smiled wickedly and waited for the shorter woman to tap out of the hold.

Instead, Natasha gasped a breath and wheezed out, “Where did you learn to fight?”

Maria didn’t let up on the pressure, but did cock her head and regard Natasha curiously. “You. SHIELD Academy. A blind man named Yazu in Madripoor. Three idiots in my platoon who kept betting against me. Bootcamp. Grade school. In reverse order.”

Natasha tapped the mat and Maria immediately moved off her, jumping to her feet in case Natasha decided to go on the offensive. But Natasha just sat up and still breathing heavily, shook her head, “No, I mean where did you learn to  _ fight _ . For yourself. To be yourself. To be a… person... with a place in the world.”

Natasha’s voice was small, and the question was strange and maybe too revealing. Maria considered her, and Natasha could see in her eyes the moment she made the connection.

“You read my files.” There was no anger in her voice, no resignation.

Natasha nodded.

“Did I say anything? When I was… little?”

“No, not specifically. But there were signs. You were… cautious of everyone. It took awhile to get you comfortable with us.”

“They all know?”

“Yes. We can erase the files, if you want. Pepper actually tried, but most of them were still recoverable. I’m… I’m not sure if I’m supposed to apologize for looking.”

“Why did you look?”

The gym was so silent that even their softly spoken words seemed to carry and fill the space.

“You kinda freaked out the first night. And you freaking out made me freak out. I didn’t know what was wrong with you. I didn’t know how to help you.”

“So you were trying to help me. I don’t see why you should apologize for that.”

“Tony probably won’t be discreet about it. He read them, too.”

“They don’t bother me. It was a long time ago. I survived.”

“They bother me.”

There was silence as the two women regarded each other. Maria searched Natasha’s face, “I would have told you, Nat.”

Natasha started to wave her off, but Maria didn’t stop. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you, and I would have told you if you asked, and even if you hadn’t asked, I would have told you eventually. This was just… very new, and I wasn’t sure if…”

“If I was going to stick around?”

Maria shrugged, “In our line of work, sometimes we don’t have the option.”

“That’s a very nice way of letting me off the hook, but you should know I don’t intend to leave. Unless you ask me to.” Natasha voice was honest, and she didn’t attempt to control her expression as she stared up at Maria.

Maria studied Natasha for a moment, and then reciprocated the sincerity by allowing a full-blown smile to spread across her face. She offered a hand down to Natasha. “Well, then you should know I have no intention of asking you to leave.”

Natasha took her hand and Maria hauled her to her feet. “Stay, Nat. I want you to stay.”

There was barely an inch of space between them.

“I told you, you don’t run when it’s important.”

“Will you tell me how you learned to fight?”

“I’ve never really thought about it. But, everyone deserves a space in the world.”

Natasha’s voice was no more than a whisper, but she didn’t break eye contact, “Can you teach me how to fight for that?”

The space between them disappeared, and Maria answered against Natasha’s ear, “I think you already know. But I’ll fight with you.”

“Will you cuddle with me, too?”


End file.
